


This Time I Mean It

by redbranch



Series: You're Still a Part of Me [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance, frnkiero andthe patience
Genre: Band Fic, Bullets Era, Feelings, Flashbacks, Frerard, Honestly it's just an excuse for some smut, M/M, Mostly Modern Day, Polyamory, Post-Break Up, Romance, Some Bullets era, Touring, completed with extras, fluff adjacent?, plots are for suckers, post-accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2018-11-06 07:46:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11031765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbranch/pseuds/redbranch
Summary: When his band has a stop in L.A., Frank calls Gerard to meet up and it turns into more than he bargained for.Loosely (so loosely) inspired by the boys meeting up at the Troubadour show.





	1. The Kids from Yesterday

Frank felt the difference between the east coast and the west acutely. The dry, hot air irritated his skin, the relentless sunshine annoyed him, and the weird, plasticky tan of everyone he passed made his skin crawl as if there were bugs underneath it, as if Los Angeles had infected him with parasites. No, this wasn’t his town. He felt alien and out of place here. _Commodified,_ he thought. Here his tattoos were a “look.” In Jersey his tattoos were just him. 

Fuck, Jersey. 

He tried not to think of it, the cloudy skies, the fucked up pavement, the humid green, as he pulled up to his destination: a large house in a “cool” part of L.A. that had an independent coffee shop every two blocks and painted fire hydrants. The house had a gate and a buzzer that opened for Frank like magic as soon as he pulled up close in his rental car. He was expected. 

This was the ritual. He’d been preparing for it ever since their first show in New Mexico. Every time, the closer and closer he edged to Los Angeles, the more Frank’s nerves rose. Albuquerque, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, and then the phone call. The phone call he had to make the morning after every San Diego show. It wasn’t like they never talked. There was a group chat. There were texts. Hell, sometimes there were Saturday afternoon chats when both of them had a break or alternately when they didn’t have a break but they were so hyped on creativity they were overflowing and needed to share it and called each other like a reflex. But this call was different. This call was loaded. 

Frank drove up the long drive along the side of a house and parked in the somewhat massive concrete driveway in front of the garage. Of course. For guests. This was one of those little things that came with their fame and their money that threw Frank off-kilter. How odd to have a driveway so large. Frank remembered how excited his father was when they moved and their new house had a two-car garage. This driveway could easily fit five. His own could fit three, with space for another three in the garage. Even his father would never have been able to conceive of a space that large for residential parking. Frank couldn’t help but let out a laugh of incredulity, gripping the keys tight enough in his hand to hurt as he shut the engine off. Fuck, they all had too much money. 

He tried not to look at the house as he climbed out, popping the trunk and gathering his gear: the Phant-o-matic, a new seafoam colored Stratocaster he wanted to try, his pedal board case, and a small bag of miscellaneous leads, headphones, etc. He loaded it all onto his shoulders and arms while shutting the trunk again in a way that looked well-practiced. And then he could no longer deny it. He looked up at the house looming over him. Somehow it was very Gerard in Gerard’s most restrained, refined moments. When he was at his most Bowie-esque. It was a lot slicker than Frank’s house, something that wouldn’t be out of place in _Architectural Digest_ , all clean lines and windows and mid-century modern aesthetic. It made Frank feel a little small. 

This was where he came whenever whatever band he was in at the time took him to the west coast. He always called first, but Gerard was never surprised to hear from him. The whole gang tried to meet up whenever he was in L.A., but the call to Gerard was separate and different and made Frank jittery in a way the others didn’t. It didn’t always involve music, but this time it did. Frank had been itching. 

\---

“I mean, I don’t know what kind of time you have, but there are some things I wanted to play out that I thought you might be into. There’s only so much we can do in a bus you know, and--”

“No, no,” Gerard said. “That’d be great. I have plenty of time. The girls are away. Lindsey’s taking Bandit on a trip to Yellowstone and I’ve got the whole place to myself right now. Had to stay back to meet the Doom Patrol deadline and… well yeah, I’d love to jam with you. The studio’s all ready and everything. And, oh God, I’ve got this new pedal a friend made me and it sounds like the guitars from a fuzz band from the Andromeda galaxy. It’s just really trippy, you have to hear it.”

Frank couldn’t help but laugh at Gerard’s genuine excitement. He was like a kid with new toys. A geeky kid, that is. “I’ll see you there then.”

“It’s a date.” 

\---

Frank made his way up the staircase to the front door painted kelly green. It had been four years since he’d been in a room with Gerard with a guitar in his hand. They’d played each other some stuff over the phone, but they hadn’t had a chance to make music together in person since the break-up, and the anticipation of being in a studio with him again both terrified and thrilled Frank. There was an undeniable electricity when they were together, Gerard’s madness buoying the both of them and pushing Frank’s guitar to new places. It was intense and incredible, and standing in front of Gerard’s door, it was something that Frank suddenly felt terribly unprepared for. He rang the doorbell and not even a half second later the door swung open and Frank was enveloped in a familiar embrace. He used the arm that was most free to hug Gerard back, his hand grabbing at Gerard’s jacket and holding him tight. Every time they met up again, it felt like reattaching a lost limb, and Frank couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

They pulled apart and Gerard clapped him on the arm twice, beaming. His hair was black again and long and wild, sticking up in all directions. Frank was struck by how remarkably the same he looked, give or take a couple more crows feet. “Frankie,” he said. “It’s good to fucking see you. Get in here, man.” He pulled Frank in by the elbow, deftly relieving him of his bag and pedal board case at the same time as he shut the door behind them with his foot. Frank nodded in reply and quickly blinked past the beginnings of tears he knew were welling up in his eyes. For all his misgivings about L.A. and the heartache he felt for New Jersey, he couldn’t deny that being in Gerard’s presence again felt right. It felt like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short piece for now. Chapters to come. This is very much a work in progress and I'm not sure of the direction it will take yet, but the idea's been knocking around in my head for a while.
> 
> Also, let it be noted for the record that I love Lindsey and Jamia IRL. Those women are kickass. This is all purely fictional.


	2. Where Do We Belong? Anywhere But Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old friends catch up, even about things they might prefer to forget.

The inside of Gerard’s house was indeed significantly more well-coordinated than Frank’s. All bright open spaces and vintage furniture, but the 70s sci-fi posters and the action figures displayed in a glass cabinet reinforced for him that this place was undoubtedly Gerard’s. They sat in the living room with cups of espresso (“I felt really extra when I bought the espresso maker,” he’d said, practically blushing, “but then when I tried it I realized it was worth every penny. I told Lindsey she had competition.”) and talked about everything. The kids, Ray’s new album, Mikey’s hair, Young Animal, the dumpster fire that was the new Batman v. Superman movie, the recent death of their favorite diner in Belleville, Jawbreaker’s comeback at this year’s Riot Fest. Frank’s cheeks hurt from smiling. He felt light, like he was floating, and it was a relief to his tour-weary body that just felt so heavy all the time. Gerard’s charisma, unrestrained nerdiness, and weird sense of humor were intoxicating, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed those things until they were sitting together like this, both mirroring each other with their right legs crossed over their left. It felt like they had rewound this pocket of time back to four years ago, and Frank’s heart ached at that, wanting to hold him and his best friend in this moment forever.

Part of Frank hated himself for that feeling, for focusing more on the eventual ending than what was happening right now. How could he be so fucking wedded to misery that he couldn’t lose himself in this moment? Frank never understood that. Part of his brain was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he wished he could take a knife, cut it out for good, and burn that part of himself to ash.

Frank had pulled his new Stratocaster out of its case and was showing it off to Gerard, pointing out the Gretsch pickups and the initials someone had scratched into the back of it near the bottom: M.B. He loved how rough and beat up it was and that it had a weird, sour tone. “I tried it on the bus with Joyriding,” he said, “and I think it adds something to that. Kind of more foreboding.” 

“Your tour looks like it’s going great,” Gerard said, running his hand down the back of the neck of the guitar he now cradled in his lap. “I saw pictures from Philly. You looked like you were having a good time.” 

Frank smiled and took back the guitar when Gerard handed it to him. “Thanks. Yeah, Philly was nuts. The crowd was so loud in that club.” He put the guitar on his knee and strummed a few muted chords out of habit. “It’s better this time than our first tour. We worked most of the kinks out. But I’m not a great frontman; I’m not cut out for it. I try to make excuses to get away from the mic sometimes and let Evan take the vocals so I can just play.” He silenced the strings by wrapping his hand around the guitar neck and looked up at Gerard. “I think sometimes the kids expect me to be you. Or an old version of me. But I’m just a depressed old fuck who gets restless if he stays in his house for too long.” 

Gerard was leaning towards him, putting his weight onto his elbow that was resting on the arm of his chair. With other people, Frank figured it might feel strange to be so vulnerable, to drop something heavier than small talk into a room, but Gerard compelled these things out of him. The look he gave Frank, the look he gave anybody, sometimes was so penetrating that you had no choice but to be excruciatingly honest. “We’re all depressed old fucks, Frank,” he said, looking away to run his hands through his hair, tugging at the ends of it. “Damn it, except for Ray. But he’s always an oddity. But the rest of us--you, me, Mikey--we’ve all been pretty fucked up at one time or another. Or all the time, kind of. Lowkey all the time.” Gerard rubbed the palms of his hands together, pressing with force as he looked off into somewhere that was not his living room--a habit. “Tours are doubled-edged swords, with one edge sharper and more dangerous than the other,” he said. “We’re prone to going off the rails all the time, but I felt like me and Mikey especially get ground into bits by tours. By the end of it is usually when we were at our worst. They’re our most public faces though, so people always have a skewed perspective.”

Frank gripped the neck of the Stratocaster hard enough that he felt the bite of the strings in his skin, even through his well-calloused fingers. It hurt to remember being on tour with Gerard. He was right; it always felt like a descent into hell and then a monumental task to claw their way back to somewhere approaching normality and stability. There was just too much of everything. Too much press, too much booze, too much equipment to haul, too many expectations, too many sleepless weekends and theatrics and fans to worry about disappointing. The group had identified Black Parade as the worst one, but Frank disagreed. Danger Days was the worst. Watching Gerard shrink day after day, wasting away into a relapse as he became the character he promised he would never be on stage was the worst. All of them worked desperately to keep him afloat even though they themselves were barely treading water, without their new families to act as support. It took its toll on everyone in a way that was far more trying than on any tour before that. 

Gerard shifted his gaze back to Frank, coming back to reality from wherever he had been before. “What I’m saying is don’t worry too much about the frontman thing,” he said, glancing at Frank’s hand white-knuckling it on the guitar. “Sometimes you have to be kind of insane to do that sort of thing. More insane than is manageable. Just because they want it doesn’t mean it’s what you should be doing. Besides, I actually think you’re a great frontman. A lot of energy without a lot of filler bullshit.” Gerard smiled at Frank, and Frank smiled back. He loosened his grip and moved the guitar from his lap to the ground, focusing on how the light moved across its shiny green surface as he spun it on its strap button absentmindedly. 

“Thanks. That means a lot. I wasn’t sure what it would be like after Sydney--hell, I wasn’t sure we’d still be alive after Sydney--but…” Frank looked back at Gerard and trailed off. He was looking at his hands, expression stony and grave, a wildly different look than he had only seconds ago. Frank felt the air between them solidify into ice, and he stopped turning his guitar. He felt a pressure to say something, do anything to break through it, but he couldn’t find the words and before he could make another effort, Gerard was gathering up their coffee cups and getting to his feet. 

“We should go down to the basement before we spend all day up here talking. You know we could,” he said as he made his way to the kitchen, his light tone a jarring contradiction to what Frank felt had just transpired. 

“Yeah,” Frank said, feeling disoriented. He heard the clatter of cups knocking together and the sound of running water before Gerard was walking back into the room, bright and beaming as always, as if nothing out of the ordinary has just happened. His eyes looked flat and distant and that hit Frank like a punch in the gut, knocking the breath out of him. 

Gerard shouldered Frank’s other guitar case by its strap and picked up one of his bags. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you where everything is.” 

Frank stood and grabbed the rest of his things, ignoring the unsettling spinning feeling that had come over him, and followed Gerard down a hallway. He was overwhelmed by the distinct sensation that his friend had disappeared to some unknown place, and Frank didn’t know how to get there and bring him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your girl's not used to writing fics. Just trying to ~work through it~


	3. Drowning Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotions run high and Gerard and Frank fall back into old habits.

Music was the ideal distraction for both of them. They fell back into a well-known routine as they set up in Gerard’s basement studio, arranging instruments and amps and gear into a familiar arrangement for them. After the break-up, Gerard and Ray had become the de facto Keepers of Things with Ray using the title to swipe some of the set pieces and their more interesting recording rigs and Gerard hoarding most of the video props and a good chunk of memorabilia. His basement was like a museum of Frank’s twenties with the walls covered in things like gig posters from their first shitty basement shows to a croquet mallet from the I’m Not Okay video to a mounted Mousekat head to all of their SPIN covers, framed and hung in a neat column. Frank could see himself evolve through the years, from his shitty dyed fauxhawk to the long bangs with shaved sides to mid-2000s swooping ear-length hair to the final buzzcut he sported for most of the Danger Days tour. 

“Oh no,” he groaned. He’d come to nose to nose with a photo from one of their early Bullets gigs as he was plugging his lead into an amp. Frank was in the middle of headbanging, his blonde-ish dreads frozen in mid-air and obscuring his face. “Please burn that shit and scatter the ashes,” he said, giving Gerard a horrified look. “Why did you let me in? I was clearly a terrible decision-maker.” 

Gerard snorted as he rummaged around in an open trunk on the floor, looking for something. “Please,” he said. “You’re not even the worst one. Ray looked like a rock and roll version of Richard Simmons for a solid two years there. Ah ha! Here’s the pedal I was telling you about.”

Whatever dark mood had come over Gerard in the living room seemed to be lifted as he lost himself in the music, chattering on and on about tone in between playing, and Frank found that being in a studio with Gerard again was an overwhelmingly comforting experience.

Eventually he managed to shift Gerard’s focus to what Frank had come there for in the first place. The tune had been in his head for weeks, but every time he played it, he could tell it wasn’t right. “I’ve got the chords, but it needs something else over it, and I don’t know what it is,” he said. He played it through for Gerard twice before he joined in on the third pass, causing Frank to falter on a beat before picking it up on the next measure. Gerard’s melody was beautiful and spare and unexpected. This was always what he was best at: putting something shining on top of the song. Usually it was with vocals, but whenever he picked up a guitar, it was like he was a condensed, simpler version of Ray. Ray had a tendency to over-perform. He loved being able to pull off something fast and complicated, relying on Frank’s chugging rhythms to hold the song as he veered off into a different path. Gerard’s approach was more harmonious. He had a knack for sensing where there were holes and when there was an opportunity to shift a section into something new. He tangled their two guitar parts together so they were inseparable. 

“Fuck, that’s perfect,” Frank said as the last note of their third pass died out. “We have to record this.” Frank set up the microphones in the center of the room while Gerard hooked them up to recorders, and the recorders to his laptop. Frank felt manic, ecstatic that the song in his head was finally becoming a reality. The next few hours were spent with Frank and Gerard moving frantically from one instrument to another, the energy in the room electric. Frank recorded the drums and guitar first, with Gerard following up with his guitar part and some flourishes on a synth because he would not be stopped.

The bass came last, or at least Frank’s odd guitarist’s version of bass. When Frank hit the final note, he let it ring in the air, eyes closed as they often were when he played. He liked to feel the music vibrate through his body, and looking at his fingers ran the risk of getting him distracted. Behind his eyelids, at least, he could live in it for a while. When he opened them, Gerard was staring at a point on the wall, gaze unfocused. Frank had lost him again. He tightened his jaw, trying not to let the disappointment show on his face. He was so satisfied to be finished, and he wanted Gerard to share in his excitement. Or at least, he wanted him to not check the fuck out. “Gee?” he asked. “What did you think?” 

Gerard didn’t move or give any indication that he’d heard Frank. Hurt began to alchemize into anger inside Frank as seconds ticked by as slow as eternities. He’d let the bass down from his lap to rest upright between his legs and opened his mouth to say something he knew he’d probably have to apologize for later when Gerard cut him off, “I was alone when I heard about the crash in Sydney.”

Frank felt like he’d been deflated, the anger and hurt escaping him in one exhale. Gerard looked the same as he had before, still staring into nothing as he continued, “Lindsey was gone, visiting her parents with Bandit. I was here, working. I was upstairs in the office, and I saw it in the news with everyone else. I called Dewees--I don’t know why--but he didn’t know anything, so I sat and refreshed the page every ten seconds, waiting. I guess I don’t know how long I did that for. I only stopped when Mikey called. He could barely talk. I think I’ve only heard him like that maybe once before when Alicia left him. He doesn’t like to cry and so he holds it all in and it tightens his throat, you know? I left to pick him up, and we ended up at Ray’s house. I don’t even remember the drive. I just remember holding Mikey up while we waited on Ray’s doorstep. We holed up in there the rest of the night, all of sitting around his kitchen table. It felt like ages before someone finally called us--Jamia. She said you were fine, that they’d taken you and Evan and Paul to a hospital. That Evan was the worst. That you were cushioned from the brunt of it. I felt so bad when she hung up, because until she said it, I hadn’t even registered that there were two other people who had been hurt.”

Gerard’s gaze focused back into reality and he looked over at Frank, eyes shining with unshed tears. “I should’ve said something reassuring to her about Evan, but I couldn’t. I was so selfish. I just wanted to hear her say, ‘He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay.’ We were terrified. I was terrified.”

Frank moved from his chair to the couch like he was pulled, abandoning the bass on the ground. He barely had to reach for Gerard; he fell into Frank’s arms like they were magnetized, clinging to his waist so hard it took Frank’s breath away a little. Tears slipped down Gerard’s cheeks now and wetted Frank’s neck around his scorpion tattoo. “It’s okay,” Frank murmured. He tangled one hand in Gerard’s hair while the other rubbed his back in a soothing rhythm. “We were all scared, but we’re fine. We’re alive. And intact, somehow. I even have all my fingers. I’ll let you count them if you want.” 

Gerard hiccuped a laugh but his grip on Frank didn’t loosen. Frank swallowed hard, doing his best to hold back his own tears. It was all too much. When Gerard was emotional it threatened to drown everyone in his immediate vicinity, and Frank was already struggling to tread water as the memories of Sydney tried their best to sweep him away in their current. 

One of Gerard’s hands finally left their death grip on his waist and traveled up his back. He grasped Frank’s hair firmly, determinedly, and pulled his face up to kiss him. It was easy for Frank to let him. He could taste the salt of Gerard’s tears in the crush of their lips, and the grip of his hand on the back of Frank’s head left him little room to argue. 

It had been years since he’d last kissed Gerard, but his mouth felt just the same, warm and soft and tasting faintly of cigarettes. The feeling of it sent some old part of him ablaze again, like an engine roaring back to life after being stalled. One of his hands balled into a fist against Gerard’s shirt and the other moved to the side of his neck, fingers spreading wide and thumb rubbing at the lobe of his ear. He was kissing Gerard back in earnest now, regaining ground he’d lost in his initial surprise.

Gerard managed to pull back from Frank’s advances, panting slightly and causing a shiver to travel down Frank’s spine as his shallow breaths hit Frank’s overheated skin. Gerard was pink, flushed from crying and from want. God, he loved it when Gerard’s skin was that color. “I was so afraid you were dead, Frank,” Gerard said, voice low and trembling as he roughly wiped away the last traces of his tears with the heel of his hand. It almost seemed like it was all for naught as he looked into Frank’s eyes and began to go glassy again, jaw muscles pulsing. “I’m so glad you’re not,” he said, thumbing a lock of Frank’s hair away from his face. “I’m so glad--”

Frank cut him off, pulling him down to kiss him again, more aggressive this time. Alive, yes. He was still alive, and he was going to make sure Gerard knew it. He plunged his tongue into Gerard’s mouth, demanding control of it. His hand reached down and hooked into Gerard’s belt loops, tugging his hips closer. Gerard’s mouth opened wider, gasping, and Frank took full advantage. His teeth caught Gerard’s bottom lip, tugging on it and eliciting a soft groan from the back of Gerard’s throat. The noise spurred Frank on to move lower. He kissed along Gerard’s jaw and then dragged his lips down across his neck, nipping lightly until he reached the join between his neck and his shoulder. He tugged on Gerard’s hair, pulling his head to the side to allow himself better access as he sank his teeth into Gerard’s neck, sucking and licking while he pulled on his belt loops yet again. Frank could feel Gerard’s quickening pulse against his lips, and it mimicked his own heart thrumming out a beat against his chest that said _Alive. Alive. Alive._ Gerard moaned brazenly now, filling the studio with the sound as he squirmed under Frank’s grip and rocked his hips against Frank’s leg mindlessly. 

Frank pulled back to admire the purple-red mark, shiny with saliva, that he’d left on Gerard’s perfect skin. It gave him a deep primal satisfaction to mark him, both to claim Gerard as belonging to him and now as a gloating fuck you to the world that had tried so hard to kill him and failed. Frank Iero was still here, motherfuckers, and he was making the goddamned most of it.

Gerard seized the moment, exploiting the pause in Frank ministrations to sling one of his legs over Frank’s, straddling his hips. He braced himself with his hands against the back of the couch on either side of Frank’s head. With the new hickey blazing on his neck, his lips puffy and red, and his hair a chaotic mess, he already looked thoroughly sexed up without them even having to fuck. The sight made Frank’s pants grow noticeably tighter, heat pooling in the pit of his belly. Gerard’s eyes were hooded, heavy and dark as he looked at Frank as if he was something to consume. Frank had a flashback to their Bullets days when Gerard was obsessed with vampire imagery. He had never looked more the part than he did now, predatory and sexual, as if he wanted to drain the life out of Frank and fuck him at the same time. He was hungry.

Fuck, he hadn’t planned on this. 

Frank felt dazed and frozen in place as Gerard loomed above him. He didn’t know what he wanted to do more: bolt or bend him over the arm of the couch and make him scream his name until he was so hoarse he couldn’t sing anymore. Could they still do that? Gerard leaned down and put his lips at Frank’s ear, whispering something Frank couldn’t hear and then sucking gently at his earlobe, causing Frank’s mouth to fall open in a low moan as his head fell back against the couch. Gerard was out for blood. “Gee,” he croaked out, his hands moving to rest on Gerard’s hips in an effort to anchor himself in reality and shake off the fog of desire. The last time they had done this, after the break up and the deterioration of Death Spells, it had felt final. Like they were putting a bullet in it for good. And then they’d found a comfortable relationship as friends. Non-fucking friends. Friends who didn’t make out in green rooms or share beds on hotel days or give rushed handjobs in back alleys behind clubs. Friends who would never be on top of each other like they were now, ready to tear into each other. 

Gerard’s mouth had migrated from Frank’s ear to his throat, kissing at his “Let Love In” tattoo. “Love this one,” he murmured into Frank’s skin while his fingertips ghosted along the exposed skin between Frank’s shirt hem and the waistband of his jeans. It made Frank shudder, his hips bucking up slightly against his will. This was going to be harder than he thought. Frank had always been putty in Gerard’s hands, but Gerard was always more ambivalent about their relationship. Even when Jamia was okay with it, even when Lindsey was okay with it, he watched Gerard tear himself apart about it, always wondering whether what he and Frank were doing was right or okay or “good.” Sometimes it hurt more than Frank liked to admit. It felt like Gerard considered his feelings for Frank to be more of a problem than something to embrace. 

In any case, it was clear to Frank that he couldn’t let this happen now. He couldn’t let Gerard do something he might regret later. And for his own sake, his heart was too tender to take that kind of bruising. With a monumental effort, he pushed Gerard’s hips back, forcing him to separate his mouth from Frank’s skin and sit up. “What?” he asked, his voice a full octave below its normal tone. 

Frank looked up at him as he caught his breath and had to suppress another groan. He looked so soft and pretty and needy. “We can’t,” he blurted out, his voice more hoarse than he had expected it to be. Gerard’s face fell, and Frank’s heart ached. He stiffened and pulled his hands off Frank, sitting up fully.

“Oh.” The hurt showed plainly on his face and in his body language, muscles tense and taught. He pushed against Frank’s thighs, trying to break Frank’s grip on his hips so he could stand, and Frank shot up to a sitting position, wrapping his arms around Gerard tight so he couldn’t escape. 

“No, no!” he said frantically. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears from his panicked heart. “Not like that. I’m sorry. I just mean I wasn’t expecting it, and I don’t think you were either. I just don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. Please, I just… I just want to make sure… we’re okay.”

Frank pressed his forehead against Gerard’s shoulder, not wanting to look up at his face. He heard Gerard sigh like he’d been deflated, and then he felt an arm wrap around him and the pressure of Gerard’s head resting on top of his. “No, you’re right. I get it. I’m not very… Well, you know. It’s fine, Frank.” He squirmed on Frank’s lap, coaxing him to loosen his hold on his waist, and Frank finally looked up at him. Gerard was smiling, seemingly unhurt, almost giddy. “We’re fine, I promise,” he said. He slid off Frank’s lap and stood up, running his fingers through his hair to try and tame it with one hand while reaching out to Frank with the other to help him up. “It would take a hell of a lot more to get rid of me,” he said, pulling Frank to his feet as he took his hand. “You’re probably stuck with me till you die, you know.”

Frank laughed and made an effort to straighten out his own hair. “I don’t remember signing up for that shit,” he said. Gerard’s demeanor was encouraging, but his heart still thudded hard in his chest, terrified that he’d made the wrong move, that he’d fucked everything up. 

“Oh I distinctly remember you signing up for it. It was one of the stipulations of joining My Chem.” He slung one of the still plugged-in guitars over his shoulder and played a rough version of the first chords from Beethoven’s 5th symphony. “What’ll it be? Death by the world’s worst stomachache? Eaten alive by your dogs?” The music shifted into the Jaws theme song, and Gerard looked very pleased with himself. “Shark attack in the Pacific?”

“Fuck no!” Frank interrupted, looking serious. “Never again.” He’d sworn off the ocean for good after they shot the video for The Ghost of You. Gerard only laughed in response, and Frank felt lighter. Gerard was always the type to try and calm the room, and Frank was thankful for that, even if he wasn’t sure how genuine his breezy attitude was. He at least appreciated the attempt. 

They noodled around with guitars and pedals until their fingers were aching and their hands were too cramped to play anymore. It was as if what had happened earlier was forgotten, or it would’ve been if Frank’s dick didn’t throb every time he caught a glance of the hickey he’d left on Gerard poking out of his shirt. When Frank packed up his things and Gerard walked him to the door, Frank paused before leaving. “Hey,” he said, hitching his guitar higher up on his shoulder to better distribute the weight. “You promise you’re still coming to my show tomorrow, right? I invited Ray and Mikey too, and they said they’d try to make it. I just… I really want you there.”

Gerard rolled his eyes and pulled Frank into a tight hug. “Of course I’ll be there, dumbass,” he said. His voice was low and quiet and so near Frank’s ear again that he had flashbacks to before, but he kept those thoughts to himself. 

He drove back to his hotel that evening brimming with anxiety. He reverted back to his old tried and true defense mechanism of keeping to himself, ignoring Evan’s attempts to get him to participate in the usual hotel day ritual of hanging out and drinking with the others in his room. Instead he lay on his bed and stared sleeplessly at the ceiling, replaying in his mind over and over what would have happened if he just let Gerard have his way on the couch.

Things were never as easy as Frank wanted them to be, and he suspected that more often than not, he was the cause of it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like it! I don't know how I feel about this one. I spent way too long writing and re-writing it, but I just had to get it out there.


	4. I'm a Mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The show's about to start and Frank's nervous. Fuck, he's never nervous.

Frank’s leg had been shaking all day. He couldn’t stop it. Every moment he wasn’t standing his knee or his ankle bobbed against his will to a fast, frantic rhythm no one could hear. It was driving Matt insane. He’d asked Frank to cut it out three times and each time Frank apologized, but started up again within five minutes. Now their opener for this leg of the tour, Young and Dead, was about to go on and Frank had used up all of Matt’s pre-show patience, practically vibrating on the couch. He chucked a drumstick at Frank from across the room, whipping him good in the shoulder. 

“Hey! Fuck!” Frank yelled, grabbing his arm. He gingerly fingered the area where he was hit and shot Matt a dirty look. “That could leaving a fucking welt.” 

Matt threw another stick at him, but this time Frank dodged to the side and it clattered against the wall behind his head. “Good,” he said. “I told you to stop. Looking at you is fucking killing me. You can’t fill me with those kinds of jitters right before we’re supposed to go out and I’m supposed to play the _fucking drums_.” 

Frank sighed and put his head in his hands, fingertips curling and tugging at his hair. “I know. I’m sorry,” he groaned into his palms. The couch dipped with the weight of Matt sitting beside him, and Frank looked up when he felt Matt tapping at his knuckles with one of the sticks he’d managed to retrieve. 

“What’s up, man? You’re never like this before shows.” Matt looked so concerned, and it warmed Frank’s heart a bit. Bless Matt. He was one of the few things that ensured Frank’s sanity stayed mostly intact on tour. They were so similar it was eerie. “You haven’t been the same since you came back from Gee’s house,” he said, leaning away from Frank and crossing his arms. 

“I’m just nervous is all. I keep picturing myself fucking up.” Over and over in his mind, he dropped chords, missed drum cues, tangled himself in his leads, which was quite a feat since they were using wireless now. “It’s like doing New Jersey shows,” he said, putting his face back in his hands, if only to avoid having to look Matt in the eye. “You just don’t want to fuck up when the audience is people who know you.” That feeling was compounded when one of them was talented and cute and had his tongue in Frank’s mouth less than 24 hours ago, but he didn’t tell Matt this. He and Gerard were lucky in that word of their escapades had never managed to escape the tour bus. They even kept Ray and Mikey fooled for a few years there until they got carried away in a hotel room a little too close to their bus call. 

Matt chuckled, and when Frank looked at him, he was shaking his head in disbelief. “How many shows have we done? Surely triple digits by now. The worst that’s ever happened was when we lost power to the amps, but even THEN it was fucking fine.”

Frank smiled a little. “You really pulled a Neil Peart that day,” he said. 

“Oh, Neil wishes.” Frank couldn’t help but snort, and Matt pushed himself off the couch and crossed the room to pour himself a cup of coffee from the pot that had just finished brewing. “Anyway, I’m not going to listen to anymore of this self-indulgent, sad sack bullshit like you’re not an actual fucking rock star. It’ll be fine. You shouldn’t be afraid of your friends… And you should trust us more. We wouldn’t let you fuck up that bad,” he said, taking a long sip from his cup. 

Frank felt his face get warmer. Fuck, he couldn’t say anything to that, could he? Matt had a point, and Frank felt sheepish for having said anything in the first place. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “You’re right. I’m just too fucking in my own head. It’ll be fine.” He looked at Matt pleadingly, hoping he hadn’t been hurtful, but it wasn’t necessary. Matt grinned and walked over to clap Frank on the shoulder. 

“I know,” he said. “Lemme know if you want a toke. Young and Dead’s drummer has a good stash.” 

The familiar, demanding British voice of their tour manager came from the hallway, “Young and Dead on stage in one minute!” Cara poked her head around the doorway, fixing Matt with a highly irritated look. “I swear to God if their fucking bassist touches my ass one more time ‘by mistake,’ I’ll skin him and stretch him over your drum heads,” she said before turning and stalking back down the hallway. 

“Wait, I’ll help!” Matt called, hurrying after her. 

Alone in the small green room, Frank sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the couch, listening to the familiar sounds of Cara corralling the opening act into place using any means necessary. He would start his pre-show rituals soon of guzzling Throat Coat, cramming in some last minute practice with Evan, and texting Jamia. And then they would go on and it would be fine, like it always was. Kids would scream, like they always did. The show would fly by in what felt like seconds, the rush from performing propelling Frank forward through what seemed like a supernatural force.

But in his mind, Frank imagined Gerard front row center, where he would never be nowadays, flushed from the heat of the crowd and with his hickey exposed. Frank’s tongue faltered; his fingers landed on the wrong strings. Evan and Alex and Matt went on without him, and Frank stood there, dumb and unmoving, and Gerard just stared. He stared and stared and Frank stared back, desperate to do anything else but finding himself paralyzed.

The cheering of the crowd and the beginning riff of one of Young and Dead’s more well-known songs yanked Frank back to reality. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself. He was firmly, pathetically, in Gerard’s clutches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update this time with a longer one coming v soon. I met Frank last week and still have not recovered. Honestly not sure if I'm still living.


	5. Bulletproof Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys have a long overdue reunion at Frank's show.

The show was hot and fast and animal. During wilder shows, Frank always got the distinct impression that this is what riding a bull must be like: barely holding on to something bucking and angry and strong with only one hand. The crowd wasn’t as insane as a New Jersey crowd, but they were close. They wanted to swallow Frank alive, and Frank wanted to dangle himself in front of their snapping jaws. On his first tour, he would have let them have him, would have jumped right into the lion’s den of the pit, but now, ever since the accident, he was more cautious. He held himself back. Not just because of the pain still extant in his knees and ankles, but because he wasn’t always sure he’d made it out of Sydney. He saw the same thing in Evan’s eyes too, that sometimes they both weren’t certain they were still alive, and Frank had a theory in the back of his mind that crossing the divide between stage and crowd put him at risking for waking up from whatever near death fever dream he was trapped in. The band, the tour, Jamia, the kids, everything would vanish. So he didn’t go that far, but he toed the hell out of the line, rocketing from one song to another and ricocheting off Evan and Alex like a bullet. 

He did not look at the bridge stretching above the crowd where the VIP area was right off to the side of the lighting tech. He did not look for the faces of Mikey and Ray and Gerard that he knew were watching him there from the shadows. He kept his eyes closed, only opening them periodically to see the faces in the front rows, just as sweaty as he was and moving unshakably with the rhythm of Matt’s kick drum. They were eager and needy and desperate for something to cling to, and Frank was more than happy to be that for them because he was sure he looked the same. 

The set was so fast and electric, punctuated by loud screams, that Frank barely had time to work in any remarks to fans, fitting it in mostly at the encore before doing a full band rendition of “Miss Me.” And then it was over. They left the stage for good; the house lights went up. The techs started breaking down the equipment. Frank stayed in the back to cool down with Alex while Matt went to help pack and Evan took his usual post back on stage, signing shirts and gathering fan art to take back to the bus and talking to the kids who were determined to stay in the venue for as long as possible until they got kicked out. Frank was of the opinion that Evan should be nominated for actual sainthood. 

Usually this was the part where Frank was giddy, still riding a stage high, but now his adrenaline alchemized into nerves. He felt separate from his body, as if he were watching himself on a screen. He shared a congratulatory beer with Alex and the Young and Dead drummer, draining it too quickly and trading jokes that Frank couldn’t remember. He only stayed for a few minutes, the tug of his old friends waiting close by pulling him away. Frank watched himself walk out of the green room, down the hall, up a stairwell covered in band stickers and graffiti, and through a heavy door that said STAFF ONLY. And then they were there, so suddenly, so unceremoniously. Ray with his more tamed fro, talking with his hands despite holding a beer. Mikey, tall, willowy, listening, with his typical Dodgers hat that Frank was beginning to suspect was permanently affixed to his head based on how often he saw it in pictures. And Gerard, standing somewhat off to the side, staring straight at Frank, as if he’d known he was coming at that exact moment. 

Frank’s returned to his body suddenly with a jolt, his heart catching in his throat. For a moment he felt frozen again. His pre-stage nightmares were coming true: Gerard staring, Frank unable to do anything. He felt panic start to rise in him, its icy fingers reaching up to wrap around his lungs, and he feared he would’ve been overcome by it had Ray not noticed him then and crossed the distance between them in less than a second, pulling Frank into a bear hug that lifted him off the ground slightly. “Holy shit, Frank!” he said. “It’s so good to see you. The show was amazing!”

Frank hugged him back and smiled as Ray’s curls got in his face. Fuck, he’d missed these guys. “Thanks, man,” he said, his words muffled in Ray’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you came.” He was, truly. So glad. It felt more like reattaching three limbs Frank hadn’t realized he’d lost rather than reconnecting with friends. It filled up empty spaces inside Frank that he spent most of the time ignoring, but now they would not be denied. As cheesy as it sounds, he felt more whole.

“Hey, Ray! Stop hogging Frank,” came Mikey’s familiar, soothing baritone. Ray reluctantly released Frank from his grip, and Frank was immediately transferred to Mikey’s embrace: bonier, but just as loving. “Good to see you, Frankie,” he murmured, giving him one last squeeze because before pulling away and holding him at arm’s length to give him a once over. “What a fucking mess,” he said, shaking his head in mock disapproval. Frank hadn’t had time to change and thus was still wearing his sweat-soaked shirt with his hair still plastered to the back of his neck and the sides of his face. “We weren’t worth a clean fucking t-shirt? A hairbrush? A towel off? I’m disappointed. I thought we mattered more to you than that.” 

Frank laughed as Ray gave Mikey a shove. He was more than happy to take Mikey’s shit. He’d take his shit until the end of time if it meant they didn’t have to be away for so long again. Already Mikey looked like he’d metamorphosed into another person when Frank wasn’t looking. The hat, the hair, the fucking _mustache_. The only thing that hadn’t seemed to change was Mikey’s preference for large-collared jackets, and it gave Frank a small pang in his heart to see him so different. “I forgot you Californians were so concerned about appearance,” he said, quickly lunging and snatching Mikey’s Dodgers cap off and pulling it onto his own head as he retreated out of range of his arms, taking refuge by his brother. “What would Danzig say?”

“Danzig lives in fucking Cheviot Hills now!” Mikey sounded affronted, but before Frank could say anything back, he was caught up in another pair of arms. Gerard held him just as tightly as he did the day before, as if Frank would vanish into nothing if he were given too much slack. 

“You were so good,” he breathed. “The show, the album, it’s all so good. No bullshit.” Frank swallowed hard. It was ridiculous that this made his heart flutter. Utterly ridiculous that their approval of his new music mattered so much to him, and even more ridiculous that Gerard’s mattered the most, twisted his guts into an emotional pretzel more than all the rest. Frank wasn’t an egomaniac, but he knew what he had was good and that Evan and Alex and Matt were the best New Jersey had to offer. He knew that unquestionably, but fuck it felt good to know that Gerard knew it, too. 

Frank turned his face into Gerard’s neck and noticed for the first time that he was wearing a scarf under his many layers of jacket and sweater and shirt, and this made the knot in Frank’s stomach twist into an entirely different shape. 

He was spared from thinking about this too much when Mikey yanked his Dodgers cap off Frank’s head, forcing him to let go of Gerard. “You’re still a little shit, Iero,” he said, settling the cap back in its rightful place.

Frank grinned and patted his cheek with affection, making Mikey grimace. “So are you, Mikes.” 

Ray came up from behind them, slinging his arms around both Mikey and Frank’s shoulders. “Listen, there’s a cool bar around the corner from here, just down a block. Do you have time to hang out with us tonight?” 

The weight of Ray’s arm was comforting. Frank glanced at Gerard out of habit, still harboring old anxiety about bringing him along to a bar, but Gerard seemed unconcerned, looking at Frank hopefully. “Yeah,” Frank said, and Gerard broke into a wide smile that Frank was certain was reflected on his own face. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The level of impatience I have with getting these out is too damn high. Juicy goodness on its way.


	6. Stage 4 Fear of Trying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys all go out to spend some time together, and at the end of the night, Frank and Gerard are left on their own.

“I just don’t think teeth are strong enough to chew through raw human flesh like that.”

“What are you talking about? Of course they are. Most people just don’t want to bite through someone else’s skin, so they don’t, but they totally could.” 

“No way, man,” Frank said, shaking his head. “She chewed through his entire LEG. We’re not talking about drawing blood here, we’re talking about human teeth being strong enough to tear apart a thigh muscle, and there’s no fucking way.”

Ray looked exasperated. “Well it’s not like she took one big bite. She had the whole night to work on it!” he said. Ray drained what was left of the beer in his hand and set the empty bottle down on the bar a little too hard. Signs of drunkenness in Ray were subtle, but Frank knew how to read the slight incoordination in his movements that usually had such finesse. He was about two beers away from being truly fucked up. They’d gone a little overboard tonight, given the circumstances. “I think you overestimate the hardiness of your thighs, man. Some French, vegetarian chick could take a bite right out of those,” he said, poking at Frank’s leg. 

Ray had taken great offense when Frank admitted that the ending scene with the dead roommate with a chewed off leg was the tipping point for him in _Raw_. “It stretched the suspension of disbelief too far,” he’d said. That was partly true, but Frank mostly kept the argument going because he liked to annoy Ray and get his hair all wild with his constantly running his fingers through it as he was whipped up into a nerd rage. Ray wasn’t very good at letting things go when he knew the right answer, especially when someone kept insisting that he was wrong. Frank loved to be that someone. 

Ray spread his hand wide and gave Frank’s left thigh two quick squeezes with his thumb and forefinger, making a ridiculous, shark-like biting noise as he did so. “Hey!” Frank said, swatting his hand away. Ray giggled. He was such a giggly drunk. The man was almost 40 and a father and still just an utter child when he had some alcohol in him. Frank loved it. “Don’t talk shit about my thighs,” Frank said. “They’d break that girl’s teeth.” Frank’s thighs were brutal, like every other part of him, thank you very much. 

“No they wouldn’t!” Ray cried, reaching his hands up to God as if he could come down and back him up.

Instead, he got Gerard. He had turned away from a conversation with Mikey to get between the two of them, slinging an arm around each of their necks. He held a mostly empty glass of Coke and ice in his right hand, and Frank could feel the cool wetness of it through his shirt. He told himself that was the only reason he shuddered when Gerard made contact. 

"Dude, this is the most pointless conversation I've ever heard," he said. 

"It was just a movie," Mikey piped in from behind them. Ray rolled his eyes and Gerard held up one finger in protest. 

"No, no," he said. "It's pointless because we already know the answer. People on PCP take chunks out of other people all the time. And there was that plane crash in the Andes in like the 70s. Where most people survived but they got trapped on the mountain, and there was nothing up there, just ice. Ran out of food in a heartbeat and had to start in on the people who'd died. And they didn't have fuckin' butcher knives up there, I'll tell you that.” Gerard was a little too into this subject, cocking an eyebrow mischievously and grinning at the gruesomeness of it, trying to shock Frank. Some things never really changed. 

Frank shrugged off Gerard’s arm and shook his head. “Call me a skeptic, but I don’t think those people just, like, bit into the bodies. I’m sure they could find something sharp, if they had to.” Frank wasn’t sure why he was choosing this hill to die on, but damn it, he’d staked his claim and now he was going to defend it to the bitter end. Frank Iero does not concede.

Gerard moved quickly, setting his glass on the bar and straightening up. “You wanna try, Frankie?” He rolled up the sleeve of his jacket and thrust his arm under Frank’s nose, the smooth, pale skin of his inner arm facing up. “I think this can square with your veganism if you just don’t think about it too hard,” he said. 

Gerard was wearing his cocksure stage look, the look he got when he was ready to do something ridiculous in front of a crowd of thousands and get away with it based solely on disgusting amounts of charm. But Frank leveled him with a humorless expression and grabbed on to Gerard’s arm, inked fingers wrapping securely around his wrist and elbow as he held Gerard’s arm up to his mouth. Frank. Iero. Does not. Concede. 

"You want to think about this?" he said, mouth inches away from the soft flesh of Gerard's forearm.

"Dude, don't test him," Ray said. "Frank's an animal." Ouch. 

“Hey!” Frank said, glaring. Ray held up his hands in apology, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have a point. Frank was not known for holding the safety and well-being of his friends, or even himself, in high priority. If someone had been cataloguing the injuries they’d all sustained since 2002, Frank would probably be the cause of most of them. But still. “I’m not an animal,” he said indignantly. He turned his attention back up to Gerard’s face and grinned wickedly. “I am a little bitey, though.”

Frank would readily admit that he took immense satisfaction in the way Gerard’s mouth fell open at that, the playfulness in his expression shifting somewhere closer to lust. 

Frank moved quickly, yanking Gerard’s arm suddenly to his mouth and pressing his teeth onto the exposed skin. Ray yelped and jolted out of the barstool, knocking two empty beer bottles sideways onto the bar in the process. It took immense effort for Frank to swallow the giggles in his throat as Ray grabbed onto his shirt sleeve to try and keep him from devouring his friend. Frank mimicked chomping down, dragging his teeth with soft pressure across Gerard’s skin until his mouth closed into a kiss. He let Ray pull him off, and now he couldn’t stop laughing, clutching his sides as he was half leaning against the bar, half held up by a very concerned and unsteady Ray. 

“Oh fuck you,” Ray said, pushing Frank away so he stumbled into Gerard. The mark on his arm was barely pink. 

“Fuck me? You called me an animal! You thought I would really take a chunk out of Gee!” Frank protested, still laughing even as Mikey hooked his arm into Ray’s, both to steady him and to hold him back from any drunken attacks on Frank. Ray was bigger, but Frank was squirrely. He always won. 

“Alright children,” Mikey said. “I think we’ve had enough fun for tonight. I promised Christa I’d return you in one piece, and I’m way too scared of her to risk pissing her off.”

Frank whined at Mikey to stay a while longer, but then Mikey reminded him of the great Thanksgiving 2010 bender debacle when Christa had given all three of them a thorough dressing down after collectively inventing a game called Great Balls of Fire with the tiki torches in her backyard. They may or may not have been wasted. A small part of Ray’s hair may or may not have been singed off. That was enough to make Frank shut up. 

Mikey and Ray settled up, and Gerard and Frank hugged them both goodbye, with Frank promising for real this time that it wouldn’t be so long before they saw each other again. Frank hated living so far apart from everyone else, especially Ray. If anything was going on with Frank, it never seemed so bad when Ray was there. He still wasn’t sure what any of them saw in this town, but it would be worth it to make more trips out here if he could, since luring them back to Jersey seemed to be a fruitless endeavor. 

Just the two of them now, Frank settled back into the corner of the bar with Gerard, a fresh beer in hand. He was immensely grateful that Ray seemed to have great taste in bars. Not only was this place aesthetically right up their alley, decked out with vintage arcade games in the back of the bar, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s _Queen of Outer Space_ playing on the television screens, and various sci fi, comic, and video game memorabilia on the walls, but it was also somewhere where 90% of the clientele wouldn’t give a shit about them. Most of the patrons looked to be in their thirties or forties, and Frank realized with a pang of existential horror when they walked in that they were right in the target demographic for this place. Fuck, they were old. 

Whatever. Frank preferred confronting his own mortality to being mobbed with fans if it meant he could breathe and drink and hang out with his friends for a little while. It was a rare treat. 

“Ray’s still ridiculous when he’s drunk,” Gerard said, smiling. “It’s great.” 

“Yeah,” Frank said with a laugh. “I don’t think any of us are much different. That’s kind of comforting.” It was nice to know that whenever he made the trip out to California, he wouldn’t find that his best friends had turned into strangers. There was something to be said for consistency. 

“No.” Gerard straightened up and shook his head, lapsing into seriousness. “We’re definitely different. We’re all in a better place now, doing healthier things. Mikey’s clean and you and Ray are doing music and I have time to draw and, you know, _breathe_ and we all get to take time to be parents and _people_ now. And we’re still friends. I wasn’t sure we’d still be friends if we kept going, but we are. No, we’re definitely fucking different. We’re all a lot less fucking stressed out,” he said. Gerard was looking at Frank earnestly now, the way he did when he was telling you something he thought was Important. He wanted Frank to agree. They as a group didn’t talk about the break up much, and Frank and Gerard especially avoided the subject between them since it was no secret that Frank was crushed when Gerard made the call. It was one of those things he felt too deeply to even attempt to mask. Whatever, he was mostly over it now. It’d been four years. He had a new band, was doing new music, still got his tour fix. He was over it. 

And here was Gerard, staring at him with his big puppy eyes like he was still the kid in his mom’s basement asking Frank to tell him that he liked his new song, that his comic sketches were cool, that wearing the bat-shaped belt buckle he’d found at Goodwill to their first show was totally a good idea. And his heart ached in a familiar way that Frank thought shouldn’t be possible because he was definitely, definitely over it. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we are different that way. We have more breathing room and we don’t have to, I don’t know, be part of a big machine all the time.” Frank cast his gaze down at the bar and took a long pull from his beer, hoping that something in it would soothe the sting he felt. Truth was, he fucking loved the big machine. When the big machine cranked out music that was so good it felt like staring at the sun with your eyelids forced open, _A Clockwork Orange_ style, yeah, he’d do the big machine all day long. 

Gerard was quiet for a moment, stirring his leftover ice with a cocktail straw. “Now you have your own, more manageable machine,” he said.

Frank snorted. “So do you,” he said. “Mine’s barely a machine. Just my basement, an overindulgent brother in law, and my own masochistic tendency to keep adding tour dates.” 

Gerard shrugged. “Whatever. If it looks like a machine and quacks like a machine and riles the kids up like a machine…” Gerard stopped stirring his ice and swiveled his body in the chair to face Frank. “You still play the same, even as a frontman. Whole body, you know. I think that’s what gets them.” 

“Not quite the same. I don’t kick over mic stands anymore,” Frank pointed out, looking at Gerard over his beer. 

“Or kick over bandmates,” Gerard added with a grin and Frank could feel his face heat up. “I like watching you on stage, though. It’s different in the crowd. You get to see more, notice more.” His eyes stayed locked on Frank, and Frank could feel the heat in his face radiating towards his ears. Being the subject of Gerard’s focus was sometimes intense. Thank god he wasn’t aware of it during the show. “You have your eyes closed most of time while you’re on,” he said. “Why is that? I didn’t think you did that as much in My Chem.”

Frank took a long swig of his beer to stall, noting in the back of his mind that he was already running out of beer to keep doing this with. “I get nervous,” he said, suddenly overcome by an interest in the labels on the bottles behind the bar rather than anything in Gerard’s direction. “It’s different in the front, you know. You have to face them more. It’s a different kind of nerves.” He looked keenly at the top shelf row of liquor, and then the glasses stacked on top of each other by type, and then the beers lined up in the glass fridge. It didn’t seem like there was any right way to say that he kept his eyes closed because playing turned him on and he need to keep himself in check. It had always turned him on. The synchronicity of so many people, so many sounds, working together and Frank being able to sense where to lead it with flourishes on his guitar line or an extra scream into the mic--it was overwhelming. It was an exercise in anticipation and fulfillment, with Frank knowing with absolute certainty where the next note should go and being caught up in the resulting tidal wave of satisfaction that came over him when it worked out and the music transcended their instruments to become something more. He could feel the songs throughout his entire being until it felt like the beat was driving him more than his own heart, and yeah, it turned him the fuck on.

Before, in My Chem, he’d been able to release that energy by thrashing around on stage or dry humping Gerard. That wasn’t exactly an option with The Patience, especially when his brother in law was the damn guitarist. He had to be more buttoned up for shows now. No rolling around or jumping on drum kits, limited crowdsurfing and of course no fucking lead singer to make out with when it was just too much. He had to close his eyes and drink his Throat Coat and keep the energy contained inside of him, only to be released in controlled bursts. Sometimes it was murder, the buzzing, coiling, raging energy he got from the music moving through his hands, his intestines, his groin like a snake. Like a boa constrictor, but strangling him from the inside out.

Frank caught a glimpse of Gerard’s face in the mirror that ran the whole length of the wall behind the bar and felt a jolt in his gut. Gerard was grinning from ear to ear, clearly seeing through his bullshit. Frank was not one to often complain of nerves. Frank dropped his eyes to his beer bottle, rolling it in his hands and noticing the fascinating detail put into the label decoration. God, he really was trying his best not to fuck around with Gerard. That would be the responsible thing to do, to not make it a “thing.” Shit, he’d seen Gerard plenty of times before and it hadn’t been like this. Now he could barely look at the man without imagining, no remembering, what he looked like underneath him.

“It’s pretty hot,” Gerard said. Frank sucked in a sharp breath like he’d been slapped. God damn it, he couldn’t just say things like that. He looked at Gerard without thinking about it, and fuck, that was a mistake. Gerard had that look again, that look like he wanted to devour Frank. “You look kind of… orgasmic,” he said. The bottle slipped from Frank’s hands and fell too hard to the bar, circling dangerously before clattering into place, upright. Gerard was many things, but a subtle man was never one of them. “Or at least I think that’s what it is. I haven’t seen you like that in forever.”

Frank made a pained noise and put his head in his hands, trying his hardest not to remember exactly the last time Gerard had seen him like that on a couch in his and Dewees’s shitty Hollywood apartment. “What are you trying to do, Gerard?” he groaned. 

Gerard laughed. “I mean, I thought it was pretty clear that I’m trying to fuck you. Should I have been more straightforward?” He put his hand on Frank’s leg in that liminal space between knee and thigh, a little further than what could be considered friendly but not yet pornographic. Frank shut his eyes and let out a shuddering breath, digging his fingers into his hair. Gerard’s hand felt hot through his jeans, and it made Frank want to crawl out of his skin. Even breathing: in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds. Breathe in, don’t think about how close his hand is to your dick right now. Hold, don’t think about the last time his hand was on your dick. Out, don’t think about how much it fucking hurt to wake up alone in that shitty apartment with nothing but a note that just read, _Sorry. Love, Gerard._

Apparently, he had been silent for too long, because Frank could hear Gerard shift uncomfortably, his grip on his leg loosening. “Unless, you’re not into that anymore, I mean. I just thought you seemed… I mean, yesterday…” He started to pull his hand back and Frank moved quickly to grab it, pinning it into place on his leg. 

He curled his fingers under Gerard’s palm, holding his hand tight as he shook his head and said, “No, that’s not it. I just…” He looked up at Gerard and gave him a half smile. “I just feel like it’s all backwards. Like I was always the one trying to jump you and you were always the one with reservations. What the fuck happened here?”

Gerard gave him the same half smile, but Frank thought he looked a little sad as he moved to rearrange Frank’s hair back into something resembling normalcy. “I miss you,” he said simply, leaning closer into Frank’s space. His puppy eyes were back. This was also Important. “You’re always on the wrong coast or on tour. We never get to see you, and it’s just not the same. And then we didn’t know if you were going to make it out of Sydney alive and… I miss you. A lot. I think I was too busy and maybe too stuck up my own ass to notice for a while, but I really fucking miss you, Frank. I’m sorry,” he said. His hand lingered by Frank’s face for a moment before falling back to the bar. “Sometimes I get too caught up in my own head about things or I make decisions for other people that I think are the best, and sometimes that makes me a huge dick.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Sometimes.” Gerard flushed and caught his bottom lip in his teeth, moving his gaze down to their hands as he ran his thumb absently over Frank’s tattoos. “I miss you too, though,” he said. Fuck yeah he missed Gerard. Nothing about touring or making music or making art was the same without him and his bizarre non-sequiturs and his diva theatrics and his extensive collection of niche indie horror flicks and his infectious creative energy that drove them all to access parts of themselves that hadn’t known before in order to match him. That’s why it hurt so goddamn much when Gerard broke up the band and then broke up with Frank in a matter of months. 

But that was four years ago, and Frank was over it. Honestly, he was. Frank squeezed Gerard’s, fingers, prompting him to look back up at Frank. Frank looked at him seriously and said, “I miss you even though you’re kind of a dick and you like t.A.T.u.”

Gerard grinned. “Hey, don’t fucking judge. They’re catchy as fuck and subvert… gender norms…” The last two words came out choked as Frank leaned forward to hook his fingers under the loop of Gerard’s scarf to loosen it, pulling the loop down away from his neck to expose the mark Frank had left the day before. It was a deep dark purple, so much so that Frank thought maybe he might have been a little over enthusiastic. But then he ran his fingertips along the edges of it and, no, he definitely didn’t have any regrets. Zero.

Gerard was staring with half-lidded eyes, mouth hanging open. Frank wanted so badly to close the distance between them and give Gerard’s mouth something productive to do, but he reminded himself that they were in a public place and already toeing the line of plausible deniability if anyone caught them. He pulled Gerard’s scarf back up into place, patting it against his neck before leaning back and looking up at his face. “What was that you were saying about wanting to fuck me?” he asked. 

It took a second for Gerard’s gaze to refocus back on to Frank, but then Gerard blinked and seemed to come back to reality. “I drove,” he said, getting to his feet and patting his jacket pocket reflexively for his keys. 

“Good,” Frank said. He barely had time to fish out a tip for the bartender from his wallet before Gerard was yanking him out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a bitch, guys. But we made it through. Lesson learned: if you throw yourself at something long enough, you'll eventually come up with some kind of mostly satisfactory result. If anyone looks through my browser history, they'll be very concerned. I read a lot about cannibalism. I'm probably on some kind of list. For the record, Gerard and Ray are probably wrong, I think.


	7. A Million Reasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweaty boys with feelings.

The drive back to Gerard’s house was hellish, with Frank already half hard in his jeans. He consoled himself by making sure the drive was even more difficult for Gerard, keeping his hand on his thigh the entire time and leaning up across the armrest to mouth at the shell of his ear at red lights until he was panting. Frank was fucking ready to go and he wasn’t very good at being patient. After so long without Gerard, he felt like a kid getting taken out for ice cream, except the ice cream was orgasms, and God, orgasms were like a hundred times better. And not just because he was lactose intolerant and ice cream gave him a killer stomachache.

The energy was beginning to coil inside of him the same way it did before he went out on stage, and he only got more amped up when they parked, attaching himself to Gerard when he stepped out of the car by hooking his fingers into his belt loops and rolling his hips against Gerard’s side like a teenager, kissing at his jaw. Gerard had only said he wanted to fuck him; he hadn’t specified where, and Frank was more than happy to throw down in the driveway if it meant that he could get his hands on his dick a little sooner. If the neighbors wanted to see two middle-aged men go at it, let ‘em. But Gerard whined and pushed him away so they could walk up the steps to his front door, and Frank slid his hands into Gerard’s back pockets as he looked for the keys, chin resting on his shoulder. “That’s not helping,” Gerard said a little breathlessly as Frank kneaded his ass. 

“Mmm, it’s helping me,” Frank said. He pushed his hips against Gerard’s ass and pulled one of his hands away to reach into Gerard’s jacket pocket where he’d seen him put his keys earlier. He pressed them into Gerard’s palm and put his lips at his ear. “Open the fucking door, Gee,” he growled, and he felt Gerard shudder against him. Frank had waited four fucking years for something like this, and now every added second he had to endure was torture, stretching his already meager reserves of restraint. 

Finally, fucking finally, Gerard managed to turn the key in the lock, and Frank practically shoved him in the house, pushing him by the hand still in his back pocket, kicking the door shut behind them. Before he had an opportunity to make another move on Gerard, he found his back pressed hard against a wall, Gerard’s hands on his upper arms pinning him there. The dude was surprisingly strong for someone who wouldn’t even look in the general direction of a dumbbell. Frank tried to catch his breath and managed to calm himself enough to focus on Gerard’s face. God, he had a great face. Frank was always mesmerized by how he managed to be simultaneously both soft and angular, his sharp nose and square chin standing out from his rounded moon face. And he barely looked like he aged, the fucker. The only giveaway was the addition of a few more lines that crinkled at the corners of his eyes. 

Gerard’s hands moved up from his arms to his neck until they cradled both sides of Frank’s face delicately, barely touching him. “I missed you,” he said, slowly, deliberately, as if he needed to be sure that Frank understood him. His eyes were boring into Frank’s, and they looked so sincere, his expression so open. Like if Frank chose this moment to take a knife and plunge it into Gerard’s chest, he would just accept it and bleed out in his arms without uttering a word of protest. Frank’s heart throbbed, and then he let himself be kissed, let himself be held when one of Gerard’s arms wound around his waist, gently pulling them together so they were chest to chest and hip to hip. Frank secured them together with his arms around Gerard’s neck and let himself sink back into the familiarity of Gerard.

It was so easy to do this again. So much had changed, but Frank still felt like he was kissing the guy he toured with, did shows with, snuck cigarettes in hotel rooms with. He was lost in a kissing style that was so Gerard, drowning in soft, warm, open mouthed kisses, Gerard’s tongue lazily tracing along Frank’s lips and dipping into his mouth. It was comforting, like returning to your hometown. 

Of course, Frank fooled around a lot in his hometown.

Frank angled his hips even closer into Gerard’s and groaned into his mouth at the extra pressure on his dick. He twisted his fingers into Gerard’s hair and yanked a little as he pulled his lips away, leaving him panting and open-mouthed again, which was probably Frank’s favorite expression to see on his face. “Missed you,” Frank said back, pressing a peck to his lips, his chin. “Missed you, missed you, missed you,” he murmured, pulling Gerard’s head back further and kissing along his jaw, chanting the phrase as he went. His lips ran into the fabric of Gerard’s scarf, and he yanked it off almost violently and threw it to the floor, annoyed that it was hiding what he was looking for. Scarf-free, Frank’s lips dragged down the white column of Gerard’s neck before settling into the familiar join between his neck and shoulder. Gerard gasped and let out a high pitched moan as Frank sucked at the hickey again, grinding his pelvis into Gerard’s growing bulge.

“Oh _shit_ ,” he bit out. One of his hands balled up in the back of Frank’s shirt and the other dropped to his hip, pulling him away from the wall. “Frank, please. Bedroom. I… please.” He tried to unlatch himself from Frank, but whenever he stepped back to pull apart, Frank stepped forward, refusing to allow any distance. “Frank!” Gerard begged. Frank ignored Gerard’s pleas as he pulled down the neck of his artfully ratty t-shirt and tongued at the skin just below his throat. He wasn’t keen on having to stop, not even long enough for them to get to a bed. Four years, damn it. Four entire fucking years. 

He huffed in frustration when Gerard put both hands on his waist and forcibly pushed him back. Gerard was flushed, the redness spreading from his cheeks to his neck and traveling beneath the collar of his shirt. Frank was pleased. “Christ, you are impatient. Come on,” he said, taking Frank’s hand and leading him down the hall.

Frank followed in a thick haze, eyes fixed on Gerard. He squeezed his hand hard, needing to really feel it. He had trouble grounding himself in reality, reminding himself that this was real and it was actually happening. It was certainly not how he envisioned his time in Los Angeles going. If you’d told him three days ago that right now he’d be heading back to Gerard’s bedroom, about to do delightful and unspeakable things to him, he would’ve told you to get off his bus and then personally slammed the door in your face. I mean, he still would, officially, but with less malice.

When Gerard’s bed was in sight from the hallway, Frank couldn’t stand being well-behaved any longer. He put his hands on Gerard’s hips and manhandled him into the room, turning him around to face him and catching him in a bruising kiss as he got to work on stripping off his many layers. “Fuck,” he said, pushing Gerard’s jacket down his arms only to be met with a Misfits zip up hoodie underneath. “It’s fucking May, Gee. In Los Angeles.” He wrestled the hoodie off of him, for the first time in his life feeling enmity towards the iconic skull logo. 

“I like it,” Gerard said, his voice slightly shaky. He was no help at all in removing his own clothes, standing still and transfixed by Frank. “I’m always co- _old_.” Gerard’s voice pitched higher and a one syllable word turned into two as Frank finally got his hands under Gerard’s hole-y t-shirt, running his fingers up Gerard’s sides greedily and rucking the fabric up his arms. Gerard’s eyes fluttered closed in a way that was almost unbearably hot, reminding Frank painfully of the tight jeans he was still wearing. But his buttons were so easy to press. Frank thought someone should paint him or sculpt him or carve him into the side of a mountain. This face was too pretty to not be preserved.

Frank leaned forward, his lips hovering just over Gerard’s. “Can I take this off, too?” he asked quietly. Gerard’s eyes opened again to look at Frank, and he nodded, his gaze flicking between Frank’s eyes and his lips, but Frank didn’t have time for kisses now. He pulled his hands out from under Gerard’s shirt and tugged it off of his raised arms, tossing it aside into the pile with everything else. He couldn’t stop the noise he made in the back of his throat as he ran his hands along Gerard’s now bare torso. His body had softened and settled into what can only be described as “dad bod,” the lines of what little muscle he had had growing fainter and his belly curving out slightly more than it used to. Frank traced along the gentle contours of him from his ribs to his hips, dragging his calloused fingertips along his abdomen until they ran into the soft, downy hair there that went in a line from his stomach to his jeans. 

Gerard gasped out a soft moan and clung on to Frank’s shoulders as Frank rested his head against Gerard’s neck, pressing occasional kisses to it. “Fuck, Gee. You look so good,” he said. He pressed his fingertips deeper into Gerard’s skin until they left white trails as his hands moved down to Gerard’s belt, fingering the loop loose and pulling the clasp apart. He thumbed open the button and pulled the zipper down, finally pressing his palm against Gerard through his boxer briefs, causing his hips to jerk under Frank’s hand. “You’re so fucking good,” he said, kissing at his jaw until Gerard tilted his face down and caught Frank’s lips in his. And then his tongue was in Frank’s mouth and Frank was stroking him through his underwear and then Gerard was backing Frank up until his knees hit the mattress and they fell onto it together, Gerard straddling Frank’s hips.

Frank took a moment to catch his breath as Gerard loomed over him, working at undoing the buttons on his shirt with trembling fingers. Correction--this is what should be carved into a mountain: Gerard shirtless with his pants half undone on top of Frank, hair hanging in his face. He wished he could cast this memory in amber and keep it perfect forever. “I was going to give you a blowjob,” he said with a grin as Gerard began to undo his last few buttons. He pushed his hips up to get some friction against Gerard and cursed the fact that he’d been too slow in getting his jeans off. 

“You can still give me a blowjob,” he said, pushing Frank’s shirt open to expose his inked torso. “I certainly won’t stop you.” Gerard stayed like that for a moment, staring at Frank, raking his eyes over his tattoos. Frank had also succumbed to the dad bod, though Gerard didn’t seem to mind. Frank began to squirm under Gerard’s gaze, needing something, anything, more. He pushed his hips up again, but Gerard pinned them back down with one hand, keeping his position above Frank. “It’s been a while. You have new tattoos...” he said, trailing off. His free hand hovered over one of the points of Frank’s barbed wire tattoo sticking up out of his waistband, but he didn’t touch, and Frank wanted to scream. 

“I know,” he said. His voice was strained and he was still wriggling underneath him, hoping to find friction some-fucking-where. “I know but please, Gerard. Please, fucking touch me. Anything. Please, I’m so fucking-”

He was cut off when Gerard moved down suddenly and licked a long, wide stripe from the top of his jeans all the way up to his throat, causing Frank to arch up off the bed, gasping. “Oh fuck,” he moaned, his hands going up to hold onto Gerard’s shoulders. “You can’t just… You can’t just _do that_.” Frank was panting and Gerard grinned, dipping down again to do something sinful with his tongue to Frank’s left nipple. Frank let out another groan and knotted his fingers into Gerard’s hair. 

“I’m so glad you never pierced your nipples,” he said before running his tongue flat across it, causing Frank’s head to fall back and his fingers to tighten in Gerard’s hair. He shifted to suck the right one in his mouth, nibbling gently, and Frank shuddered beneath him, letting out a shaky breath and trying to buck his still pinned hips again. “I was really afraid you would when you and Mikey got in that bet.”

Frank made the mistake of picking his head up to look at Gerard again and felt like he might actually combust. His lips were swollen and wet with saliva and he was licking at Frank wantonly, looking up at him with wide eyes and blown pupils. “I’ve never… I’m not one to want to make sure everyone knows where my fucking nipples are at all times under all of my shirts. And besides, making Mikey pierce his nose was always the goal,” he said. He put a hand on Gerard’s cheek and ran his thumb over his bottom lip, admiring how good he looked peering up at Frank with lust plain in his eyes. He slid his thumb into Gerard’s mouth, and he took the bait, sucking on Frank’s finger obscenely. “Jesus,” he said under his breath. Bless this man’s oral fixation. Maybe this was what should be carved in the mountain, except no--this was far too pornographic. Mountain carvings had to retain some sense of respectability, and Gerard’s cheeks hollowed around Frank’s thumb, eyes closed in concentration, well he supposed that didn’t quite hit the mark. Frank’s other hand reached down between them to desperately work at undoing his jeans. He was at the end of his rope and if he had to be confined by denim any longer, he was going to burst.

He’d managed to get the loop of his belt and part of the clasp undone when Gerard grabbed Frank’s hand tight around his wrist and pinned it to the bed beside him, and Frank nearly sobbed. “Oh fucking fuck _you_ ,” he said. This was his least favorite game: Gerard puppeting him into just the position he wanted, his controlling, theatrical tendencies taking hold of him and driving him to make the picture in his head of how he imagined this would go become a reality. Frank was usually in the business of thwarting those plans, but pinned under Gerard like this, he didn’t have much room to argue. 

Gerard released Frank’s thumb with a wet pop and laughed, covering Frank’s mouth with his before he had a chance to level some more choice insults at him. Frank bit at his bottom lip, but Gerard only groaned into Frank’s mouth, which was simultaneously both infuriating and excruciatingly hot. “Patience,” he said, pulling away from Frank when he began to dig his nails into Gerard’s back. “Just give me a second to do this right.”

“Doing it right would be doing it sometime before I hit fifty, you dick,” he said. But Gerard ignored him as he began to scatter small kisses along his neck, his throat, his chest, working in a line down Frank’s body until he got to the “And” above his jeans where he paused and traced along the lines of the letters with his tongue. “Oh, God. You _are_ a dick, you motherfucker. Fuck,” he said, drawing in ragged breaths. Frank squeezed his eyes shut and tugged at his own hair, trying very hard not to just push Gerard’s head down to where he needed it to be. It’s not that Frank was unappreciative, but it was torture to have him so close to Frank’s obvious bulge without giving it any attention, and Gerard fucking knew it, as was evidenced by his trademark giggle coming from somewhere down by Frank’s belt. 

By the time Gerard finally decided to get to work on his jeans, fingers brushing against Frank’s hard dick as he pulled down his zipper, Frank was almost undone, arching desperately up into Gerard’s touch. And then in what felt like one motion, Gerard had yanked Frank’s pants and underwear halfway down his hips and taken several inches of Frank’s cock into his mouth with no preamble. Frank fucking yelped at the unexpected sensation, gripping the sheets hard in his fist and panting like he’d run a mile as Gerard took more of him into his warm, wet mouth with a little hum that Frank felt deep in his bones. “Oh!” he gasped. “Gee…” He reached down to stroke his thumb against Gerard’s cheek. Frank tried not to thrust too much, like an asshole. He really did try, but he couldn’t help rocking his hips in time with Gerard’s sucking, and he couldn’t find it in himself to pull back when he went too far, eliciting small gagging sounds from Gerard. He didn’t seem to mind though, gamely taking Frank into his throat. Frank moaned shamelessly when Gerard swallowed around him, tangling his fingers into his hair and thrusting more into his mouth. Fuck, he’d forgotten how good he was at this. 

He propped himself up on an elbow to look down at Gerard and groaned at the sight of him: mouth shiny and wet and stretched around Frank, eyes closed in concentration, fingers stroking at the swallows on his hips. “You look so good like that,” he said, running his fingers through his hair affectionately, gathering it so it stayed out of his face before tightening his grip to hold Gerard still. “Look at me,” he whispered, and Gerard did, staring up at him with big hazel eyes as Frank held his head still and began to fuck up into Gerard’s mouth, and Gerard just took it, which for some reason felt like a fucking modern miracle to Frank. “That’s it,” he said shakily, and Gerard shifted, spreading Frank’s legs further apart so he could go down a little closer to Frank’s hips as they thrust up, and that was fucking it for Frank.

He was so close, and he so didn’t want to be. He had plans, but his dick clearly didn’t care, not letting him stop the rhythm of his hips fucking into Gerard. “Gee... Gerard, please. Fuck. I can’t,” he whined desperately, looking pleadingly into his eyes, though he wasn’t sure if he was asking to come or asking to stop. Gerard decided for them though, pulling slowly off of Frank’s dick, making Frank utter a sound almost like he was in pain as he was exposed to the cruel cold air, his head falling back against the bed as he tried to regain control of himself. It took monumental effort to uncurl his fingers from Gerard’s hair as he tugged down Frank’s pants the rest of the way while Frank toed off his boots and kicked free of the fabric. Frank could hear him utter a quiet “fuck” and the sounds of Gerard dealing with his own jeans, and then he was on top of Frank again, warm and naked and pressed against him and roaming his body with hungry, searching hands while he kissed Frank, mouth still wet and messy from blowing him, which Frank decided was his favorite way to be kissed. 

It was impossible to miss Gerard’s erection pressing against Frank’s own, warm and heavy and rock fucking hard. It was also impossible to miss the small movements of his hips, rocking against Frank, trying to find some sort of relief for his dick. “Frankie,” he begged hoarsely, barely separating from Frank’s mouth in order to say it, like he’d rather not say it but his hand was forced. Frank opened his eyes, and his heart thudded again. Gerard looking at him from under his lashes, brow creased, red lip caught in his teeth. He put a hand on the side of his face and pulled Gerard’s lip free with his thumb, kissing him sweetly, closed-mouthed, like a teenager. At the same time he wrapped an arm around Gerard’s waist and hauled him up with him into a sitting position, then leaned forward even more to press him back into the bed. Gerard’s legs locked around his waist, and he pulled Frank’s hips forward with his ankles, causing them both to moan as their dicks slid against each other between their stomachs. 

“Jesus,” Frank said, voice tight. “Gotta-gotta stop. Or else I-I’m gonna…” Frank trailed off, pulled back from him a bit just to try and get an inch of distance between his dick and Gerard’s still rolling hips. “Lube?” he gasped out, which was impressive because he was about five seconds away from not caring, from just sinking his dick into Gerard regardless because he was mildly afraid that he was going to die from a lack of blood flow to the brain if he had to wait any longer. 

Gerard reached out and fumbled through his top nightstand drawer by feel, keeping his legs hooked around Frank, which unintentionally pulled him closer again and made Frank’s thighs quake with the effort of staying still and not pushing against Gerard like he desperately wanted to. He came back up what seemed like a million years later with a bottle of lube and a condom, and Frank practically snatched them from his hands. 

Frank slicked up his first two fingers in no time, reaching down and pressing them against Gerard’s hole. He watched as Gerard’s face screwed up, mouth dropping open and hips ratcheting higher as Frank pressed his fingertips inside. “Fuck, Frank,” he said, holding on to Frank’s neck with one hand and the other hovering around his dick but not touching, like he didn’t know what to do. “More. Please, that’s so fucking good.” Frank didn’t need to be asked twice. He pushed his fingers in deeper to the second knuckle and tried not to think too hard about what it would feel like when his cock replaced them. Gerard threw his head back, pressing against Frank’s hand and driving his fingers even further into him until they ran against Gerard’s prostate and his whole body jerked like he’d been shocked. He moaned loudly and his hand tightened on the back of Frank’s neck, and Frank was so lost in the shifting expressions on Gerard’s face that he wanted to keep going, keep fingering him in different rhythms and positions like a science experiment until he could figure out which combination of movements caused each change in Gerard’s features. He was so pink and needy and biting his lip and scrunching his eyebrows and it was fucking irresistible. But then Gerard’s dick rubbed up against Frank’s again and demanded his attention. Frank needed to be inside of him. Now.

He pulled his fingers out of Gerard and reached back to tug his legs apart from their vice grip on his waist, hooking his arms around them and pressing them back against his body instead. “Ready?” he asked, voice rough like he was the one who had just had a cock down his throat. He was lining himself up even as he asked, the gentle pressure and warmth of Gerard against the tip of his dick making his pulse begin to race again. Gerard looked at him and opened his mouth to speak but then just nodded. He reached down between their bodies and wrapped his fingers around Frank, gently pulling him closer and guiding him into his ass. Frank felt like he was watching everything projected on a screen: inches of himself disappearing into Gerard, Gerard panting out soft moans on every exhale, his other hand reaching down to grab his own leaking cock and jack himself off slowly as he canted his hips towards Frank to take more of him in.

And then he said his name, a ragged, desperate “Frankie” falling from his lips, and Frank plummeted back down into reality. He grabbed tight around Gerard’s thighs, digging his fingers into his flesh, and pulled him towards him while he pushed forward, burying himself completely in the tight heat of Gerard. 

“Fuuuuuuuck,” he said in a long exhale, bending to kiss Gerard while he got to grips with being inside him, rolling his hips against him. How he’d survived for so long without this, Frank wasn’t sure. 

“Frank,” Gerard gasped, breaking the kiss. He had his fingers knotted into Frank’s hair, pulling so tight it sent a sweet pain through his scalp. “Fucking fuck me, Frank. I _need_ it. Now, please,” he whined. Frank felt the brush of Gerard’s knuckles against his stomach and reached down to grab his wrist, pulling it away from his dick and pinning it against the bed like Gerard had done to him earlier. Tit for motherfucking tat. 

“Now look who’s impatient,” he said, smirking. But he did as Gerard asked, picking himself up and thrusting into him properly, because fuck, Frank needed it, too. Gerard writhed, actually fucking writhed, underneath him, whimpering and humping the air as Frank moved. 

“That’s not fucking fair,” Gerard said. His voice sounded like he was almost close to sobbing, taking in big gulps of air as Frank fucked him into the bed so hard their skin smacked together obscenely on each thrust. 

Frank used his free hand to grasp Gerard’s slick dick, and he arched up off the bed, moaning and clawing at Frank’s hair again. “It is completely fucking fair,” Frank said, beginning to pump him in time with his thrusts. He leaned forward to get more leverage and to put his lips by Gerard’s ear. “ _I_ want to make you come.” The new angle pushed Gerard’s legs up higher, allowed Frank to go deeper, and apparently hit Gerard’s prostate from the way he cried out, clutching at Frank and fucking into his fist. “Me,” he said, and he reveled in the strangled sort of noise that escaped Gerard’s throat. 

His hips picked up their pace, Frank’s fist following suit. It was true, he wanted to be responsible for bringing Gerard to pieces, and he hoped to God he’d get there soon because Frank wasn’t going to last. His movements were already becoming uncoordinated, his hips falling ever so slightly out of rhythm. The feeling of Gerard underneath him, surrounding him, was overwhelming, and Frank felt drunk with it. “Fuck, so good, Gerard,” he said, his voice cracking. His hips moved faster against his will, rocketing towards the crest he knew he was approaching. 

And then there was more pain as Gerard’s grip tightened further in Frank’s hair and words were spilling out of his mouth, a cascade of “don’t stop”s and “Frank”s and “fuck”s and “so closes”s. And then his hips moved to match Frank’s thrusts even more forcefully, taking Frank’s breath away, and then he was crying out and gripping hard to Frank’s shoulders and coming all over his chest and stomach and Frank’s hand, hips undulating and then trembling with the rest of his body as he came apart underneath him. The muscles in Gerard’s neck went taught, cheeks pink, mouth open and gulping in air, and when he finally opened his eyes slightly to look at Frank through his dark lashes, Frank lost it. “Fuck,” he gasped. His orgasm hit him by surprise, crashing down on him like a tidal wave. He clung on to Gerard’s hips, fucking through it and coming so hard that the only thing that filled his mind for a few moments was static. Static and the impossible feeling of Gerard boiling hot and clenching down on him. 

When he came back to Earth, he collapsed on top of Gerard, his arms and shoulders shaking too badly to keep him upright. Gerard wrapped his arms around Frank and held him there, paying no mind to the mess that was now squished between them. Frank nestled his face into Gerard’s neck and moaned again at the feeling of Gerard running his fingers through his hair, applying pressure in soft trails to his scalp. “That was...” he mumbled into Gerard’s skin, “everything.” He tilted his head up slightly to kiss at the underside of Gerard’s jaw. 

Gerard said nothing and instead hooked one of his legs around Frank’s waist and rolled them onto their sides, keeping his leg around Frank so he wouldn’t slip out just yet. Frank settled his head onto a pillow and looked at Gerard’s face as he stroked Frank’s cheek. He thought for a moment that if some Twilight Zone shit happened and they were frozen in this position for eternity, Frank forever staring at Gerard’s face, that would be just fine. At the moment he couldn’t think of any better way to spend his time.

And then Gerard ran his thumb across Frank’s lower lip and looked determined as he leaned in to kiss Frank. It was a deep, tender kiss with Gerard’s tongue softly sweeping along the contours of Frank’s mouth, his hand on Frank’s cheek holding him steady and firm against him. He kissed Frank like they had all the time in the world to be kissing, like there was never a time when they hadn’t been kissing, like they would never have to stop, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Frank to let himself be pulled into the fantasy of it until his hand was on Gerard’s neck and his heart had slowed back into a regular, steady rhythm and he was kissing him just the same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't the end, but we're getting close. This chapter was an enjoyable marathon, though I'm not that experienced at writing smut, which is all this is. Again, cannot emphasize enough how fictional this is.


	8. All I Want is Everything We Never Had Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, more porn. Also, Frank's a little lovesick.

Frank woke to sunlight rudely angling into his eyes. Damn Gerard and his new fetishization of natural light. Whatever happened to the Gerard that stayed in the basement? What had Los Angeles done to him? Frank grumbled and turned carefully in Gerard’s arms, trying not to jostle him as he buried his face in his chest, warm and dark and smelling like cigarettes and sweat and _Gerard_ : infinitely better than the bright morning sunlight. 

Gerard shifted and Frank froze, staying dead still even as Gerard’s arms tightened reflexively around his waist. He really hadn’t meant to wake him. He wasn’t keen on the idea of this moment ending. But then Gerard sighed and his muscles relaxed again, his breathing evening back out into a slow rhythmic pattern that told Frank he was still lost in sleep, and Frank let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

Gerard looked peaceful and soft in his sleep, all tension disappearing from his mouth and his eyes and his forehead, which Frank didn’t realize was a rarity until he saw him like this and the differences became obvious. He was usually so guarded, holding his mouth and eyebrows in a harder line. Even in his much more chill, much less public life, he still looked like that. A learned behavior. Frank figured he was probably similar, though he didn’t notice it in himself. You don’t go more than a decade being in a band as big as they were without developing some defense mechanisms. Especially if you were Gerard and your whole brand centered around wearing your heart on your sleeve. Though there was no question in Frank’s mind that the person Gerard needed that heart to be guarded from the most was himself. Frank had picked him up off of dirty bathroom floors, dragged him out of bars and into therapy, held him in tour bus bunks while he cried often enough to know that.

It was impossible to look at him and not remember those things, even after so much time. He changed his appearance so often: dying his hair, wearing makeup, donning different costumes and personas, but Frank saw Gerard through it all. Recovering alcoholic Gerard, comic book nerd Gerard, outcast Gerard, genius Gerard, exhibitionist Gerard. He was always just a dude who loved what he loved unashamedly and gave the world a big middle finger when it tried to discourage him from pursuing it. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that he took the “me against the world” attitude too far, eschewing the support of his bandmates and friends in favor of booze and drugs and anything that would make him feel like more than just a nerdy, depressed kid standing in front of a crowd and asking them to clap while he bled for them because he didn’t know what else to do. 

Gerard always had a tendency to be his own worst enemy, but now Lindsey was there to act as a balance, tempering his more self-destructive inclinations. Frank liked to think he was a balance, too, or at least he thought that he used to be. He thought that their relationship did something positive for Gerard, but sometimes he questioned if what he thought they had was real, if all the nights spent together and heart to hearts and “I love you”s had really meant something to Gerard or if it was just the pressures of the chaotic lives they led. He certainly hadn’t wasted any time getting rid of him along with everything else he’d decided was bad for him when he found himself energized by another sobriety kick that ended with the band and Frank left in the dirt. 

Frank didn’t begrudge him that, honestly. He couldn’t be mad at him for doing what he thought was healthiest, for trying to save himself from falling into a black pit that he may or may not be able to escape from. But Frank couldn’t deny he was hurt. 

They had never dated, officially. They were never lying to the press when they said that. And they had both always avoided putting labels on their relationship, but it was something. At least Frank thought so. Something concrete. Something both Jamia and Lindsey had encouraged them not to stop when it became obvious that the Venn diagram of their relationships was impossible to separate without causing a major blow to the sanity of everyone involved. So yeah, it hurt a lot to be thrown away, to be told that he didn’t fit into this new phase of Gerard’s life. It felt like Gerard had taken a match and burned nearly everything Frank had ever loved to the ground in one fell swoop, and Frank had to dig himself out of the ashes. 

Frank saw all of those things in Gerard, but he also still saw his best friend who always meant well and did his best, and Frank couldn’t even come close to hating him. Hell, being so close to him, his body pressed against Gerard’s warmth, still made Frank’s heart flutter in his chest. Maybe Gerard had given up on Frank, but Frank certainly never gave up on him. Frank was never someone who could let go of love so easily. Or at all. 

And so he couldn’t help himself from brushing a lock of hair behind Gerard’s ear, tracing along his sleeping face gently with his fingertips. Even if what happened last night never happened again, even if he never got another chance to wake up next to him like this, he was glad to be with him one more time. Gerard in and of himself was worth it. Frank cupped his hand around Gerard’s jaw and leaned in to press a soft kiss to his lips. 

Gerard stirred awake, taking in a sharp breath, and he uttered a surprised “Mmph!” against Frank’s mouth before moving a hand up to Frank’s face to hold him there and kiss him more. Gerard parted Frank’s lips with his own and slipped his tongue into his mouth, lavishing him with long, lazy kisses that made Frank pull him in even closer, losing himself for a moment in the feeling of the warm sheets and the weight of Gerard’s leg across his and the humid closeness of sharing a space with another person. When they parted, Gerard yawned and rubbed his eyes, snuggling into his pillow and looking at Frank with a punch-drunk smile. “G’morning,” he said, his voice still gravelly from sleep. “If I knew I could wake up like that all the time, I wouldn’t have so much damn trouble going to sleep.”

Frank chuckled and pressed another chaste kiss to his cheek. “Well, you can go back to sleep. I just wanted to say hello before I go to take a shower.” They had been too exhausted and blissed out the night before to opt for anything more than a wet hand towel, and Frank still had grime on him from the show that made his skin itch when he thought about it too much. They were used to it, but Frank was always hyper-aware of any opportunity to get clean, and Gerard’s shower was calling to him like a siren song.

Gerard whined and tightened his leg around Frank as he pulled away. “No, stay,” he said, pouting. “Please.” He looked at Frank with big, pitiable eyes, but Frank shook his head and managed to untangle himself from Gerard and get to his feet. 

“Absolutely not,” he replied. “No way I’m letting anyone or anything get between me and some good soap, not even you. It won’t kill you to wait ten minutes.” Gerard was more tolerant of filth than any other human Frank had ever met. If people didn’t remind him, he’d probably never shower at all until his body started to decay away from all the built up dirt and grime. He was lucky Frank thought he was cute. 

Gerard sighed and settled back into the bed with a huff and a whimper, defeated. Frank rolled his eyes. “Jesus, I didn’t think they let you turn 40 if you’re still just as melodramatic as a 14 year old girl,” he said. 

He was quick to dodge a pillow Gerard had suddenly sent hurtling at his head, laughing maniacally as he took refuge from any further assaults in the bathroom and shut the door behind him with a click. “Fuck you and don’t devalue teenage girls!” he heard Gerard yell after him, followed by the thud of what Frank assumed was another pillow being lobbed at the door. Well, at least now he was awake. All in all, Frank had done him a service.

He wasted no time in stripping out of the striped pajama pants and old The Bronx t-shirt he’d stolen from Gerard to sleep in, leaving them in a pile on the title floor and turning on the shower. When he stepped in and moved under the spray, he almost moaned. There were few things he enjoyed more than the feeling of searing hot water on his skin melting away the leftover remnants of shows and travel and now his last minute tryst with Gerard. Frank braced his hands against the shower wall and bowed his head under the spray, letting the water run all over him and soothe his aching muscles. 

If he thought about it too much, Frank realized how truly bizarre it was that he and Gerard were doing this again when their circumstances were so different from before, when they had managed to live their lives without it for so long. They were married with kids, living on opposite sides of the country, working on their own separate projects. They didn’t need each other like they did before, in close quarters, hanging on by a thread in the face of crushing pressure from the fans, the band, the label, the world. Frank didn’t need Gerard to love him like that anymore, but damn he wanted it. 

He forced himself to push those thoughts aside, trying to avoid the inevitable spiral into insecurity and anxiety Frank always trapped himself in. Getting clean: that was the focus now. He was somewhat surprised to find the Gerard did indeed own shampoo, given the grease pit that was his hair, and he was doubly surprised that it smelled absolutely fucking delightful: tea tree and rosemary. He’d have to get his hands on a bottle of his own later.

He had almost finished washing the suds out of his hair when a knock at the glass shower door made him almost jump out of his skin. He wiped away a swath of steam with his hand to find Gerard, hair mussed from sleep, lip held securely in his teeth, staring back at him. “Yes?” Frank asked, cocking an eyebrow and pushing his wet hair back out of his face.

“I…” he said. He trailed off as his eyes travelled lower, slowly taking in every inch of Frank’s body that was visible through the fogged door, and fuck, it was hot. “I need a shower, too.”

The corner of Frank’s mouth tugged up slightly. “You could wait,” he teased. “I know California’s in a drought, but I don’t think one more shower is the tipping point.” 

But Gerard was already stripping, yanking off his pajamas and throwing them into the pile with Frank’s with remarkable speed. He opened the shower door before Frank could say anything else about it, and then he was crowding Frank up against the wall, bracing his hands on either side of his head and looking at him like a man wandering the desert would look at a newfound lake. “It’s my shower,” he said before dipping down to capture Frank’s mouth in a kiss. 

Frank sighed and leaned into him as he wrapped his arms around his neck and waist. He was a sucker for this. Whether this was the same as it had been before or not, whether Gerard loved him or not, Frank was intoxicated by the sensation of being with him, both novel and familiar at the same time. 

They kissed until Frank pulled away, reaching up to brush a lock of now soaked hair out of Gerard’s eyes. “You know, I did come in here to actually get clean. Soap, water, that whole thing. I’m really fucking gross,” he said. 

Gerard was kissing at his shoulder, but now he licked up Frank’s neck, catching the beads of water that clung to his skin on his tongue and making Frank shiver and suck in a sharp breath. “Mm, I like it,” he said, “but I’ll help. Let me help.” He stepped back from Frank and reached over to grab a washcloth and cover it in soap before Frank had a chance to say yes or no. He took Frank’s wrist and led him forward, off the wall, and turned him to get at his back. And then Frank heard a gasp and a wet thunk as Gerard dropped his washcloth to the shower floor.

“What?” Frank asked, a little panicked. He tried to turn to look at Gerard, but his hands were firmly on his shoulders, holding him in place. “Gee?”

“Your back,” he said in a strained voice. 

“Oh.” The funny thing about his tattoos was that Frank was a lot less aware of them than other people were. He didn’t think much of them on a daily basis until someone said something about them, his backpiece especially. “Yeah, I finished it. It took fucking ages,” he said, feeling Gerard’s fingers tracing along the chain tattoo encircling his back and then shifting over to the snake chasing after swallows that were travelling up the bottom edge of his shoulder blade. He couldn’t help but squirm under his touch. Gerard was always fascinated by his ink, but having someone look at his tattoos like this made him feel like he was under a microscope, like he had to justify his choices, which wasn’t something he was ever interested in doing. 

Gerard’s fingers ran over the new skull below his crossed guns, directly above his ass, and Frank’s dick twitched, the tempo of his pulse kicking up. He traced the outlines of it with his fingertips, and Frank fought the urge to moan. It was almost annoying how easy it was for Gerard to turn him on. His dignity really took a hit. “That one hurt,” he said through his teeth, trying to hold himself together. “A lot.” 

“Did it?” Gerard breathed. His hands were spread wide across Frank’s hips now, stroking his thumbs reverently across the looping script of “Search” and “Destroy.” Frank closed his eyes, losing himself in the sensation of being touched so tenderly. Thank God Gerard was so handsy. Frank needed that sometimes: the unique transfer of energy and affection through skin to skin contact. He was starved for it on long tours. It was one of those things, like showers and clean laundry, that grounded him in his body and made him feel human again. 

And then Gerard’s hands were trailing lower, down his hips and over his thighs and then Gerard was on his knees, kissing Frank’s skull tattoo and catching the water that rolled down his back on his tongue. Frank’s breath came heavier now, his hands clenching into fists as Gerard trailed his fingers along his thighs. There was a break, Gerard’s mouth leaving his skin which now felt cold without him, and then Frank felt the now retrieved washcloth being gently scrubbed along his leg. “Gee,” he said, a little hoarsely. The coconut-iest scent he’d ever smelled hit him all at once as he tried to look down at Gerard, though he only had the view of part of his leg and a disembodied hand. “Damn, that shit smells amazing.” 

Gerard leaned around Frank’s legs and grinned up at him. “I know! It’s Lindsey’s. Well, all of it’s hers,” he said, going back to his task. 

Frank smiled to himself. Of course. Gerard wasn’t exactly known for his excellent taste in toiletries. Or having any toiletries, period. This thought was interrupted when he felt Gerard’s lips on the back of his inner right thigh, kissing and sucking at the sensitive skin there and coaxing Frank to spread his feet wider so Gerard had better access. “Oh fuck,” he choked out. Caught off-guard, he was proud of himself for being able to swallow his moan, but he couldn’t help hissing through his teeth and reaching one hand out to the wall for support as Gerard sucked a hickey into his flesh, the bruise blooming purple and red on his skin. Finally Gerard pulled away, pressing a chaste kiss to the mark he’d left behind, and Frank twisted to look down at him accusingly. “You said you wanted to help.” 

“I am,” Gerard said innocently, blinking his big hazel eyes up at Frank as if that alone would absolve him of all of his sins, and damn it, it did. He was reaching up and pushing Frank to face the wall again, and Frank didn’t protest even though he knew he should. This tactic was killing him. He was half hard and dying a slow, painful death from having to stay still, having to not pin Gerard down on the floor and ravish him the way he wanted to.

But Gerard’s washcloth was back, running over the mark he’d just left and then over Frank’s hips and across his ass and then Gerard swiped between his cheeks which made Frank’s nails dig into the heel of his palm and then the washcloth was gone again and it was Gerard’s tongue, flat and wet and hot and licking a stripe across Frank’s hole as he held him open. A full body shudder ran through Frank and he couldn’t stop himself from moaning this time, reaching his other hand to the wall to hold himself steady. “Fuck, Gerard. That’s so-” Gerard cut him off as his tongue pushed firmly against the ring of muscle, licking inside of Frank, and Frank’s words turned into moans, little “ah ah ahs” as he began to fall apart, all coherent thought now somewhere very far away.

For a moment, he lost track of where he was, his head swimming. Gerard’s tongue and mouth and hands blurred into one sensation until Gerard made some type of happy humming noise in his throat and sent vibrations through Frank that made his hips jerk reflexively. “Ohgoddamnit,” he gasped out in one word as Gerard pulled him back with a firm hand on his hip. He was panting, breathless, as Gerard pulled away, moving up to kiss at his skull tattoo again.

“You’re so good at this, Frankie,” he murmured into his skin. 

Frank couldn’t help but laugh between shaky breaths. “Good at what? Standing around and getting fucked?” Frank said with a smirk that didn’t last long as Gerard dipped down to lick at his hole again, drawing another somewhat embarrassing moan from Frank.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice so calm it was almost dreamy. “Exactly.” Gerard’s hand found its way to Frank’s dick, and Frank felt like a bolt of electricity hit him at the moment Gerard’s long fingers wrapped around him. He had almost forgotten how hard he was, with all of his attention focused elsewhere wherever Gerard’s mouth decided to roam. Now he was stroking Frank, slow but with a firm grip that was certainly enough to drag Frank closer and closer to the edge.

And then, too soon, he was gone, his fingers leaving to stroke down his thigh. Frank didn’t realize he’d started a rhythm into Gerard’s hand until he was thrusting into air, and he groaned and whimpered in frustration, his hands clenching into fists. ”Gee, please,” he said, trying to sound kind of casual about it, trying not to sound too needy, trying not to sound like he was quickly melting into a puddle formerly known as Frank with all of Gerard’s teasing. He was answered with the unmistakable pressure of fingers pushing against his ass, and the feeling made Frank’s forehead drop down to rest on his arm, his mouth open and gulping in lungfuls of warm, humid air. And then he was pushing back, fucking himself on Gerard’s two spit-slick fingers and really not giving a damn about how it looked because, fuck, he needed something and he needed it now.

Before Frank had gotten his fill, Gerard was scrambling to his feet again, the change in the angle of his fingers making Frank moan desperately, his knees going weak, until he slid them out. “Fuck, Frank,” he sighed, grabbing a handful of Frank’s wet hair and pressing his body against the wall with his own. Frank could clearly feel his hard cock pressing up against his ass, and he pushed back on it shamelessly as Gerard sucked at his neck and held Frank to him. 

“Yes, fuck Frank,” Frank said enthusiastically, grinding back against Gerard’s dick to make his point crystal fucking clear. His nerves were frayed. Maybe his brain had suffered from too little blood flow for too long, who knows. All he knew was that he needed Gerard inside of him. like, yesterday. “Please, Gee. Please fuck me, please,” he said, refusing to be distracted by Gerard’s lips and teeth on his neck as he reached behind him to wrap his fingers around Gerard and guide him to where he needed him. 

“I will,” he said against his neck. “Just… Fuck, just gimme a sec.” And then his arms disappeared from around Frank and he was pulling away--AWAY--which was the opposite of where Frank had been wanting things to go. 

“Where the FUCK are you going?” he said, turning in time to see Gerard stepping out of the shower and out of his sight.

“Lube!” he called back, and Frank pounded the side of his fist against the wall in defeat, cursing him a thousand different ways under his breath. Frank didn’t give half a shit about lube right now. He didn’t have room to care about anything besides how fucking hard he was and how badly he needed to get off. Leave it to Gerard to be conscientious. 

It couldn’t have even been a minute, but it felt like ten years before Gerard was back, dripping and clutching the bottle in his hand and looking far too pleased considering the torture he had inflicted on Frank. “Got it,” he said, holding it up like a prize. “Now we can-” But he didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before Frank advanced on him, turning and slamming him up against the shower wall with perhaps more force than was necessary and sticking his tongue down Gerard’s throat like he owned it. His patience was officially spent. Now he was on a do or die mission to get what he wanted.

Gerard whined and leaned his head back against the wall as Frank sucked and bit at his neck, rocking against Gerard’s hip because the need for contact on his dick was undeniable. “You’re such… a fucking diva,” he said between kisses, reaching down to take Gerard’s cock in his hand and making him gasp. “Doing everything just how you want it.” Frank tugged on Gerard’s hair to bring his mouth back to his, kissing him deep and dirty until his hips stuttered into Frank’s hand. 

Gerard’s eyes were hooded and glazed over, color flushed high in his cheeks and lips red and swollen when Frank pulled away. He looked so fuckable, it made Frank’s stomach twist, and he promptly dropped to his knees, wasting no time in licking up Gerard’s shaft. 

Gerard moaned, his voice pitching higher when Frank took the head of his cock into his mouth until he uttered a breathy, pleading, “Frank.” 

Frank pulled off to look up at Gerard, whose gaze was fixed firmly on him. “S’my turn,” he said, wrapping his hands around Gerard’s thighs and taking all of Gerard into his mouth in one go as if to make a point. 

He gasped and bucked his hips involuntarily, pushing himself further down Frank’s throat, which made him groan around his dick. “Sh-shit. Frankie,” he moaned as Frank began to bob his head and settle into a rhythm. If Frank was being honest, blowing Gerard was probably his favorite activity, mostly because it made him go to pieces. The inevitable ache in his jaw and throat was more than worth it to see Gerard so ruined. 

Frank hollowed his cheeks around Gerard, and he made a strangled sort of sound. The lube he had been clutching dropped to the ground with a thud as his hands scrabbled for purchase on the the smooth wall, eventually settling for resting on the back of Frank’s head, fingertips digging in slightly to his scalp. “Frank. Oh, Frankie, fuck, you look so hot like that. I can’t, I-” Frank looked up at him through his lashes and Gerard’s words devolved into a moan. His grip on Frank grew tighter as he moved his hips in time with him. He was barely thrusting, but it was enough that Frank could tell how much he wanted to hold him still and fuck his face like they used to when they staggered in, sweaty and horny, to some bathroom stall or supply closet after a show, too adrenaline-high to wait. And on another day, Frank would be glad to let him, but right now, he had other plans.

He pulled off of Gerard’s cock, leaving him with one final lick along his length before he grabbed the lube that had fallen next to him and got to his feet. He stumbled when Gerard surged forward to kiss him, falling back hard against the wall as Gerard practically fucked his mouth with his tongue, _Christ_. He pressed the bottle of lube into Gerard’s palm and angled his hips up into Gerard’s, managing to separate their lips long enough to look into his eyes and tell him what he needed. “Fuck me,” he said, and before the words were even completely out of his mouth, Gerard was turning him, pressing close up against him and kissing and biting at the ink on his shoulder as he slicked himself up. Two lube-covered fingertips pressing into Frank made him squirm, but when he felt them replaced by the tip of Gerard’s cock against his entrance, his knees began to quiver, his ability to hold it together quickly beginning to unravel. 

The feeling of Gerard filling him, stretching him, made him melt, the coolness of the shower wall against his cheek and Gerard’s hand on his hip the only things keeping him grounded in the moment. Gerard’s lips were at his neck, breath hot and fast on his skin as he thrusted into Frank and rambled about how much he missed him, how much he missed this: “Been so fucking long,” “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” “You take it so well.” He chanted his name over and over again-- _Frankie, Frankie, Frankie_ \--and Frank reached for Gerard’s hand that was grabbing him at his waist, interlacing their fingers and holding on for dear life. Neither of them lasted long, and Frank came after Gerard, with Gerard panting in his ear and his hand on his dick. 

They collapsed on the floor together, neither having the strength to stay upright, and Gerard gathered Frank in his arms, retrieving the washcloth from where he’d abandoned it earlier and finishing his original task. When they were both clean and Gerard had shut the water off, they still sat there, kept warm by the steam, and Frank rested his head against Gerard’s shoulder as he ran his fingers lazily through his wet hair. “Did I actually tell you I like your backpiece?” he said. “Because I do.”

Frank chuckled and smiled, leaning into his touch. “Yeah, I got that. I still think you should get one, since you like them so much.”

“Fuck no.”

“You can’t even tell that it’s a needle when it’s on you.”

“ _Fuck_ no.”

“I could do it for you. Right here on your hip or maybe your arm. Or your shoulder. Arms and shoulders are the easiest.”

“Hell fucking no.”

“Lindsey would think it’s hot.” 

“Nope.”

“I would think it’s hot.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, and he pulled Frank in for a kiss before he could press the issue any further, and Frank found that he didn’t mind all that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got away from me a bit, but I needed to get it out of my drive. 
> 
> The next chapter or the one after will probably be the end. I may post some outtakes/extras because I've written so much for this fic that hasn't made it in, guys.


	9. Your Type of Metal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end. Much feelings.

Frank’s eyes slipped closed as his fingers worked across the fretboard of one of Gerard’s Jazzmasters. They were never his favorite. The neck didn’t fit in his hand the way that he liked. It was too slender--not enough to fight against. But he liked the way the body felt in his lap and the fiddliness of the switches and how the tone was warm but not overwhelming. He’d felt an itch after he and Gerard managed to pull themselves together and disappeared into Gerard’s basement to scratch it. He knew he would have to go soon, have to step back into the real world and out of whatever alternate universe existed in Gerard’s house, like waking from a dream. 

But he still had some time left. 

He listened to the guitar as if he wasn’t the one playing it, as if it was just a song on the radio. He tried to anticipate the chord changes without thinking about them, hear the variations in the strum pattern before the signals had fully made their way from his brain to his hands. He liked this way of making music best: when he hadn’t thought it all of the way through and instinct took over, driving him to play what the song needed rather than he wanted. That was one benefit to going solo. Song-making in My Chem could never have been boiled down to this kind of simplicity. It was impossible when there were four different sets of ears going over each part, analyzing and reworking everything until it had warped into something entirely different from what it started as. Frank liked that, too--it usually led to something that sounded impressively bigger than themselves--but there was something clean feeling and natural about being able to pull a guitar line together out of feeling alone and have that be that. 

The stairs creaked under Gerard’s feet as he headed into the basement, but Frank didn’t stop, not wanting to lose the thread he’d managed to latch onto. Only once he’d strummed the final D chord did he open his eyes. He leaned over to switch off the amp and tap the stop button on his recording app before turning to face Gerard who was leaning against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle and grinning as he held two mugs in his hand. “Coffee?” he said, gesturing carefully with the mugs.

“Yeah,” Frank replied, shrugging off the guitar and taking the mug Gerard offered him as he perched on the armrest of the couch. “Thanks.” He took a sip and nearly puckered. No one made stronger coffee than Gerard, but Frank liked it. What good was coffee if it didn’t kick you in the ass? 

“That sounded nice,” Gerard said. “Really nice.” He leaned back and ran his hands through his hair as he sipped at his cup, eyeing Frank like he was made of diamonds or Gibson P90s or something equally as wonderful. 

“Thanks,” he said again, taking a long pull of his coffee to hide the heat he could feel in his face because damn it, Gerard’s praise still shouldn’t matter as much as it did. A flash of green caught his eye and for the first time he took a moment to examine the mug he was holding. “Frankenstein?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at Gerard and smiling. “I appreciate the attention to detail.”

Gerard looked pleased. He held up his mug: Dracula. “Mikey gave them to me. Separately, actually, but if there was ever an occasion…” He trailed off and his gaze drifted from Frank to his phone, still lying on the top of the amp. “Play it for me?” he asked, looking at Frank hopefully. “I only caught the end of it.”

Frank didn’t hesitate. He reached over and unlocked his phone, rewinding and tapping the play button a moment later. He closed his eyes again out of habit as he settled back into his spot, listening to the song for real this time. He tried to imagine it louder, bigger, with drums and a bassline and more rhythm guitar underneath. It was upbeat and steadily paced, but there was room for juice. There always was. 

He felt the couch dip down under Gerard’s weight, and then he was tucking himself against Frank’s side and Frank’s arm went around his shoulders as Gerard rested his head on his chest, listening. It was a familiar pose for them, and Frank let himself enjoy it as Gerard tapped out the rhythm on his knee.

By the last verse, Gerard was humming some sort of counter-melody that Frank was trying to burn into his brain for later. The recording stopped, and they sat in comfortable silence as Frank traced slow patterns on Gerard’s arm. Gerard was warm pressed against him, his hair tickling the exposed skin just above the collar of Frank’s shirt and fingers still resting lightly on his knee. It was nice to feel like they could do this again, nice to feel like Frank wasn’t crazy for wanting it. But still, a kernel of doubt lingered in the back of Frank’s mind. He wondered if he was making more of it than it was, if when Gerard told him in the bar that he wanted to fuck him, that was all he wanted. Frank’s heart was big and stupid and too prone to falling in love; he knew that. He wasn’t sure if everything that happened with Gerard meant what he thought it meant, but he soaked it all up greedily nonetheless. 

Finally Gerard spoke. “I like it,” he said. His voice was soft, but it sounded loud compared to the quiet of the room. “Kind of reminds me of Stage 4. With the pace, y’know, and how it’s all kind of clustered around-”

Suddenly a shrill ringtone pierced the calm, and Frank opened his eyes to glance at his phone, but Gerard was already grumbling and moving out of Frank’s hold, fishing around in his pocket. He looked at the screen and frowned. “Shit, sorry, I gotta take this. It’s Jon and I’ve been missing his calls forever,” he said, getting to his feet and already heading to the basement stairs. He paused at the first step and looked back at Frank, his thumb hovering over the talk button. “Try it a half step down. Might be cool.” A quick smile flashed across his face, making Frank wish that he had his camera, and then he was gone, climbing the steps two at a time and answering the phone with a distant, “Hey…”

Frank did try it tuned down a half step, and he found he liked it. It settled into a place that was a little more melancholy, but fuck if that wasn’t right on brand for him. He played it again, tweaking here and there--switched guitars, did another run. Switched guitars again, trading the Mustang he’d found for a friendly looking Les Paul as he tried to find the right rhythm to go underneath. He went at it until the coffee was gone and he was satisfied enough to leave it where it was for now. 

He emerged from the basement only to find no Gerard in sight. He made his way to the kitchen, rinsing out his mug in the sink, and still, no Gerard. But something caught his eye on the dining table, and he walked over to feed his curiosity. Placemats had been pushed aside to make room for more than a dozen A4 pages, all laid out in sequence on the table, and he noticed immediately that they were covered in Gerard’s distinctive sketchlines, his handwriting scrawled along the bottom with notes like, _Monster chasing ship through cave system, cross-section, close ups intersperse family drama with imminent threat of death. CAVE typically poor communicator, means well._

“That’s the new Cave issue,” came a voice behind him, and Frank jumped a little. He hadn’t even heard him come in. “Jon and I are storyboarding. Now that we’re deeper in the series, it helps to sketch out some vague ideas we have so we aren’t just handing Nick a script and saying, ‘Here, you figure this out.’”

“Yeah,” Frank said, still running his eyes over the pages. They were rough, some of them offering alternate ideas for the same panels, but it was comforting to see Gerard’s drawings again. And intimidating. Even for rough work, they were more skilled than anything Frank could ever hope to do. Not that he was an aspiring comic book artist--he just appreciated talent. His eyes slid back to the first panel and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “It looks like Chloe’s fucked in this issue.”

“No,” Gerard said defensively. He stepped up next to Frank and studied the panels, running his finger along his lower lip absentmindedly. Frank tried not to stare and also tried not to get preoccupied with the fact that he was so close Frank could feel the warmth radiating off of him and smell faint hints of coconut soap. “Not fucked, just… facing challenges. Many challenges.”

“Uh-huh. And you spent a lot of time on this monster,” he said with a smirk, pointing to a small character study of a monster, frilled neck and tentacle hands all meticulously detailed and complete with front, back, and side views. It was by far the most complete drawing on any of the pages. 

Gerard flushed. “Yeah. I, uh, I just really like the monster,” he said sheepishly, biting down on his lip. And okay, it would be unreasonable for anyone to expect Frank to see that and not interpret it as an invitation. He crowded closer to Gerard and settled one hand on his hip, cupping the other around his cheek and gently tugging his lip free with his thumb.

Gerard stared, his lips still parted and his breath hot on Frank’s finger. His hands hovered in mid-air, like he wasn’t sure where to put them. Frank’s focus shifted from Gerard’s lip to his eyes, and he couldn’t help but smile as he shook his head. “Of fucking course you like the monster,” he said. Gerard’s gaze flickered between Frank’s hand and his lips and his eyes, doing the circuit another time until it was just his lips and his eyes, and then just his lips, and then he was kissing Frank, gently pressing him back against the table and cradling his face in his hands. It was a careful kiss: slow, soft. It was one of those kisses Frank was busy trying to commit to memory even while he was in it.

Gerard pulled back and Frank leaned forward, trying to find his mouth again, but then Gerard took a full step back and Frank stopped cold. “Frank,” he said when they separated. He looked at Frank and then away, down at the “Let Love In” tattoo peeking out from the collar of his shirt. “I don’t… I really liked seeing you again. And… doing this. I just...”

Frank stiffened, overcome by a sensation like he was quickly being turned to ice from the heart outwards. He felt like there was a “but” coming around the corner and it was bearing down on him like an oncoming train and he was a damsel in distress tied to the tracks. 

Gerard was quiet for too long, staring down at his tattoo, fingering the sleeve of Frank’s shirt. Frank licked his dry lips, trying to stay calm. “You just?” he prodded. Gerard could veer off track in a conversation entirely if you let him, but Frank wasn’t giving him any room this time. 

He released his lip, red from biting down on it again, and clutched the fabric of Frank’s sleeve in his fist. “I mean, I just… I don’t want to just see you, I don’t know, twice or three times a year whenever you happen to be in town. I-” He paused and finally looked up at Frank, his mouth hanging open for a moment as he tried to find the right words. His eyes were wide and open like they had been the night before, pleading with Frank to listen as he said something Important. “I meant it when I said I missed you. I really, really fucking miss you and I want to… see you more. Be with you more. I don’t know how you feel, but I-”

He was cut off by Frank launching himself at him, pulling him tight in an embrace and forcing the air out of his chest all at once. Frank was bleary-eyed, clutching Gerard to him and pressing his face against his neck. Frank Iero did not cry in front of other people. Period. He was all in favor of being open about your emotions, but this was a line he tried to keep for himself. He didn’t like how it made him feel; he didn’t like how other people felt around him when it happened. And he reminded himself of this as he worked to try and blink away the wateriness in his eyes. 

He felt Gerard’s arms wind around his waist and his chin drop to Frank’s shoulder. “I love you, Frankie,” he murmured.

Frank swallowed against the warmth that bloomed in his chest and radiated through him, all the way to his fingertips. He thought of how heavy and cold and awkward their first encounters had been after they were over and Frank had skillfully avoided seeing him for six months. He thought of the first time Gerard managed to make him laugh after that, the first time they were alone together, watching bad movies and listening to good music and managing to make it through even as they danced around the massive elephant in the room. He thought of all the times they’d been together after that, alone or with family or friends, rediscovering the easy rhythm they had together. He thought of how he’d accepted it, how one day he’d looked at Jamia and told her he’d be happy if that’s how it went from now on, because nothing was real until he’d said it out loud to her. He thought about the fact that Gerard was the second call he’d made when he’d gotten his hands on his cell phone again after two days in a hospital in Sydney, still technically part-bus with pieces of windshield glass embedded inside of him. 

He thought of all of these things as he picked his head up from Gerard’s shoulder and turned his face to kiss him. Suddenly, they didn’t seem so important. The memories took on the washed out veneer that belonged to the past, and Frank filed them away as things that wouldn’t have to preoccupy his mind now every time he thought about Gerard, because Gerard loved him and wanted to see him, and Frank was all in on it. 

Frank felt boneless, his hands shaking. He was overwhelmed by it all, and he let Gerard take most of his weight. He was thankful when he felt Gerard moving them back until he was pressing Frank against a wall with his whole body, moving a hand from his waist to cup the side of his face as their lips moved in tandem. 

It seemed like ages before they parted, Gerard pulling back only a couple of inches to finally breathe. His eyes were still closed and his mouth hung open, sharing Frank’s air as he caught his breath. Frank traced along his jawline with a now-steady finger until he reached Gerard’s chin and he opened his eyes to look at him. Frank’s heart throbbed at the sight. Gerard’s particular brand of beauty always hit him hard, and that was especially true now when Gerard was not just looking at Frank, but into him, his eyes tender and intense and making Frank feel like he was melting where he stood. “Gerard,” he said, voice soft and trembling, “I-” But he didn’t get to finish. Gerard swallowed his words in another meeting of lips and tongues and when his fingers slid into Frank’s hair, Frank almost let him get away with it, leaning into his touch out of habit. 

But he managed to snap himself out of it and keep his wits about him as he pushed Gerard back gently with a hand on his chest. They parted again, both of them breathing a little heavier this time, and Gerard looked at him desperately. “Gerard.” he said again, making an effort to sound steadier than he felt. “I-”

“Frank, please, I don’t wanna hear you say it," he said. He sounded tortured with a pained, guilty look on his face. "I can’t. I’m sorry. Don’t--mmph!” Frank clapped a hand over his mouth, ignoring his sounds of protest. Listening, it seems, was still not one of Gerard’s strong suits.

“Christ, shut the fuck up. This is important,” he said. “I love you, Gerard.” He felt Gerard start to move forward to kiss him again, but he held him back with the hand still on the center of his chest. He wanted him to hear it all, even if he had to gag him and tie him to a chair to get him to listen. “I love you, and I want this. I want to come see you and for you to come see me and I want to be with you, and-” Frank swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump in his throat. Frank Iero did not cry in front of other people. He didn’t. Absolutely not. “I never stopped loving you. Not even after everything. I could never do that. Jesus, I could never not love you, even if I wanted to.” And that was as far as he could get before his voice started to fail him, cracking on the last syllables, but it was enough.

Gerard was on him again, kissing him hard and catching his bottom lip between his teeth, and Frank sank into it. He was the past the point of even being able to pretend he was holding himself together. But Gerard was solid and holding Frank securely against him as he pressed reverent kisses to his lips, his jaw, his neck, his throat. “Come out here,” he said between kisses, and Frank could hear a similar strain in his voice. “Bring Jamia. Bring Miles and the girls. Bring whoever; I don’t care. Wanna see you. Wanna be with you. Won't leave you, I swear. Please, please.”

And Frank heard himself saying, “Okay, okay,” over and over: a promise. Gerard’s mouth on him made his mind fuzzy and he repeated it, “Okay, okay, okay,” even as Gerard’s words devolved into just a series of quiet “I love you”s murmured into his skin.

\---

They stalled in the parking lot outside of the hotel, the tour bus peeking out from where it was parked on the other side of the building like an omen. “We’ve got the summer off,” Frank said, his fingers running along the outer seam of Gerard’s jeans. “Some of July, August, and most of September. And then November, December. Part of October. Jamia and I are trying to plan some vacations before the kids have to go back to school.” 

The side of Gerard’s mouth quirked up into a half-smile and he grabbed Frank’s hand, stilling his fingers. “You should make one of them a Disneyland trip. You can stay with us. We have space and you know Bandit loves the girls. You can get Kat to tattoo whatever square inch of bare skin you have left,” he suggested. 

Frank rolled his eyes. “I’ll have you know I have plenty of space left,” he said. 

“On your ass doesn’t count.” 

“It counts to me.” He shifted in his seat and leaned across the center console, pausing for a moment an inch from Gerard’s lips to look up at him. “Besides, you love my ass,” he said with a smirk, closing the distance to capture Gerard’s mouth in a kiss. 

They kissed until Gerard’s fingers were tangling into his hair and Frank had to pull away because he really, really did not have time to fuck Gerard in a hotel parking lot, as much as he might have wanted to. “I think we will do Disneyland,” he said softly, giving Gerard’s hand a squeeze. “They haven’t been in a while and this time there are no diapers so me and Jamia won’t want to actually hang ourselves off the Matterhorn.”

“You’d leave your kids orphans in the happiest place on Earth?” Gerard asked, giggling.

Frank shook his head. “Nope. We kill ourselves after we’ve already fed the kids to the abominable snowman inside. That way they won’t miss us.”

“Right,” he said with a chuckle. His fingers were carding through Frank’s hair absentmindedly, tucking some stray strands behind his ear, and Frank felt his heart flutter at the touch. “So, Disney?” he asked, looking at Frank hopefully.

Frank nodded and leaned in, smiling against Gerard’s lips. “Disney,” he said, kissing him again. 

\---

Frank leaned his forehead against the cool wall of the elevator, still feeling like he was floating as he held his phone to his ear and waited for the rings to stop.

_“Hey.”_

Frank couldn’t not smile at the sound of Jamia’s voice. “Hey,” he said, hearing someone that sounded suspiciously like Miles excitedly telling a story in the background.

 _“How’d it go?”_ she asked.

Frank sighed and ran his hand through his hair as the elevator opened onto his floor. “Really, really well. I’ve got a lot to tell you. Oh, but first, I think we’re going to Disneyland in the summer.”

_“Oh good. We probably won’t want to commit suicide on the Matterhorn this time.”_

Frank's laugh echoed down the hall. “That’s what I said!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all folks. I hope this was a fitting end. Writing this fic has been nice, and Irma gave me some time to work on finishing it up. 
> 
> I think I'll be posting at least two outtakes after this about things that happened outside the timeline of the story, and at least one of them will not be as pleasant, so buckle up.


	10. World Destroyer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of a prequel to this story. Before FIATP, before Hesitant Alien, it's late 2013 in Hollywood. MCR has broken up. Death Spells isn't panning out the way Frank was hoping. Frank runs into Gerard at a show and the night takes a turn he wasn't expecting.

_“I hate looking at your face!_  
_It’s always just the same,_  
_So full of fucking pain.”_

Frank winced and took another swig of his beer from his spot against the wall at the back of the crowd. He’d come here for the opener, a two-piece post-punk band that was doing some cool stuff with loops, but he decided to stay for the main act anyway, and now he was regretting it. The genre of young twenty-something year old dudes singing about heartbreak and blaming their ex-girlfriends for all their problems was not among Frank’s favorites. It did, however, give him a good excuse to drink, and he took it gladly. It still felt like a treat to get to go to a show as purely a spectator, and he was set on making the most of it, especially since it seemed that Death Spells was slipping away, the deadline for their record release getting pushed back later and later, bookings at the studio to finish it cancelled week after week. Needless to say, he needed a pick me up. 

These things happened. Not all projects were meant to be; not all plans can be completed. But knowing that didn’t make Frank feel any less shitty about it. Two bands dead in just a year. What did that say about him? 

_“I still remember the smell of your hair,  
It smells like poison in the air.”_

“Oh, fuck.” He groaned into his beer bottle as he drained it. It was too painful to listen to to be funny, and the too loud, distorted to hell and back guitars and the angsty looking boys at the front of the crowd singing along weren’t helping anything. He tossed the empty bottle into the recycling with a satisfying crash and pulled his hoodie up over his head as he turned to leave. Though he wasn’t known for being the most conscientious about protecting his hearing, even this wasn’t worth the ringing in his ears that was already beginning to build. He slapped some bills onto the counter to settle up and pushed his way out onto the street, noting how the world seemed to be oddly tilted. Was that his fifth beer? Frank had a tendency to forget that he was kind of a lightweight and also that skipping meals for cigarettes wasn’t helpful to his situation. Speaking of cigarettes…

His hands patted his pockets dumbly, fumbling for the pack he was sure he had on him somewhere. “God dammit,” he grumbled, when he came up empty. He was going over his pockets again when he felt a hand slide into his back pocket. “Hey!” he said, jerking away. One hand balled into a fist instinctively as he spun to tell off whoever it was, only to see Gerard standing in front of him with a slightly crumpled pack of Camels held in between his fingers. “Oh…” His eyes widened in surprise and his posture relaxed. “What are you doing here?” he asked as Gerard shook out two cigarettes from the box and handed it back to him.

“Good to see you, too,” he said with a chuckle. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and Frank put the cigarette to his lips automatically, leaning in to catch the flame before Gerard lit his own stolen cigarette and stowed the lighter away. “Finder’s fee,” he said with a waggle of his eyebrows before taking the first puff. 

Frank almost forgot to smoke, watching the way Gerard’s eyelids fluttered slightly and his lips pursed as he exhaled. He always made it look so good, and Frank was pathetically weak for it. What was worse was that Gerard knew exactly how good he looked doing it, and Frank could sometimes catch him posturing, adjusting his pose or the way he held the cigarette into something he thought would look cooler. Not that that had any kind of dulling effect on Frank’s attraction 

“No, I was at the Ratsnake Lounge to see a friend of a friend’s band--they’re called The Nervous Shakes--and I stepped out a little early. I was walking back to my car and look, here you are, seeing…” Gerard cast his gaze up to the marquee and squinted at the name. “Nihilism on Ice?” 

“No,” Frank corrected quickly. “The opener, Grey Hills.”

Gerard smiled a little and looked back at Frank. “Good, because Nihilism on Ice is probably one of the worst band names I’ve ever heard.”

Frank smiled back. “Well, it’s fitting for them, I guess. They’re pretty shit.” 

They leaned against the wall of the club and smoked in comfortable silence for a few moments, the drumbeat from inside shaking the brick behind their backs and the pavement under their feet. At this point, it was a comforting feeling. Wherever there was loud music, Frank felt at home, like it was his turf, even if it objectively wasn’t. He flicked his cigarette ash to the side and thought that it was silly to think that way. 

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Gerard said.

“No,” Frank said, toeing at a tuft of crabgrass growing through a crack in the pavement with his shoe. “You haven’t.” Since the break-up, Frank felt like he really understood the term for the first time. They all scattered like roaches under a spotlight. He hadn’t seen Ray or Mikey in months. He and Gerard saw each other sporadically, sometimes clinging to each other for weeks at a time, sometimes going just as long without even texting. Lately it had been the latter, and it felt like longer than usual this time, but Frank couldn’t bear to count the weeks. Dates and calendars bummed him out nowadays. It seemed like they were just counting up to or back from his latest failure, and Frank found himself suddenly uninterested in keeping time. 

Gerard let out another plume of smoke and turned the cigarette back and forth between his fingers like he did when he was thinking or nervous. “Well it’s good to see you now,” he said. His voice was softer, a little tender, and when Frank looked up at him, he had a small smile on his face which Frank couldn’t help but mirror. 

The music swelled and then suddenly stopped, and the sound of clamoring voices began to grow. The club doors opened as the first members of the crowd began to trickle out, and Gerard pulled a familiar move in turning towards Frank, leaning half over him so his back was towards the crowd, hiding both of their faces from view. It was a good move--effective if Gerard’s hair wasn’t too obnoxious that day, and his currently black chin-length tresses with blonde ends were riding the line, but not quite there. They were probably safe. 

Gerard was so close that Frank could feel the warmth of him even through his thick hoodie. His face was turned away slightly, undermining his own concealment techniques by glancing back at the crowd through his hair, and Frank had a chance to study the outline of his jaw--another one of his weaknesses. He took a drag of his cigarette and closed the distance between them so his lips were against Gerard’s slightly stubbly skin. He parted them and let the smoke he was holding travel up along the planes of Gerard’s face, kissing and mouthing down his jawline once it was gone. He felt Gerard swallow thickly and make a noise in the back of his throat, but he didn’t stop. He was here and he looked so good and Frank was a little drunk and he just wanted what he wanted.

His lips migrated to Gerard’s neck, picking a spot on the side of his throat to suck on as he grabbed his hip to pull him closer. “Frankie,” he gasped out, pushing him back with a hand on his chest. His eyes were wide, cheeks beginning to pinken, and his breath came heavier. “We’re in… God, the fucking street. We can’t.”

Frank rolled his eyes and fisted his hands in Gerard’s jacket, manhandling him around the corner of the club and into the shadows of an alley, pressing him up against the cool brick. “You’re overcautious,” he mumbled, going back to his task of sucking and biting at Gerard’s neck in a spot he knew he liked. Gerard moaned quietly and grabbed a handful of the material of Frank’s hoodie as he pressed their hips together, eliminating any space between them. “Haven’t seen you in weeks,” he said, switching to the other side of Gerard’s neck to distract him from the crack in his voice. When they were apart, it was easier for Frank to fake it and say that he didn’t need Gerard, but when they were face to face, the ache in his heart throbbed and reminded him of how painfully lovesick he was. Gerard had a tendency to reawaken that part of him that was naively optimistic and ignored what a mess they both were and the tumultuous lives they led, instead preferring to go all in on his stupid, enduring faith that if you cared enough, everything would turn out okay. 

Frank didn’t know how many times he’d have to be proven wrong to let that idea go, but he clearly hadn’t reached the limit yet. 

He felt Gerard’s fingers strong under his chin, coaxing him to lift his head and look him in the eye. His expression was lustful, his body still flush with Frank’s, but there was also something deeper, darker, maybe a little bit sad. “Sorry,” he said, and Frank could feel that he meant it, that he wasn’t just trying to mollify him. “It’s all just… hard, you know?” 

Frank did know. My Chem’s split was probably the hardest thing he’d ever had to live through. Missing his friends was hard. Not being in a studio with them was hard. Picking up his guitar and thinking of all the songs--their songs, his songs--that he used to love and could no longer bear to play was hard. Being unceremoniously dislodged from the rhythm he’d been in for twelve years and then dumped into the cold reality of the world outside of My Chem was terrifying and cruel. Lying in his bed in his and Dewees’s seedy Hollywood apartment every day, not knowing what his next move would be but knowing he had to be here, away from Jamia and his kids, in order to make it was killing him, slowly but surely.

Even looking at Gerard sometimes was impossible. Their relationship was inextricably tangled up in the band, and now it hovered over them like a black cloud. But Frank was too dependent, too fucking desperate to hang on to something, anything, to let it drive him away. 

Gerard’s fingertips ghosted along his cheek and then over his bottom lip, and then he was pulling Frank in and kissing him and Frank felt his knees go weak as he wrapped his arms around Gerard’s neck and clung to him, pressing him harder against the wall as he leaned against him. Gerard grunted but kept a hold on him and supported his weight as he licked into Frank’s mouth, fingers grasping at his now short hair in order to keep him where he wanted.

Frank didn’t hesitate to suck on Gerard’s tongue and bite down on his lip, satisfied by the way Gerard groaned into his mouth when his teeth scraped the soft flesh. Frank was buzzing, coiled tight and ready to go, alley be damned. Hell, they’d done much worse than making out in places more public than this. The entire Projekt Revolution tour was an exercise in discovering how much they could get away with in tents and dark corners and the backs of mostly empty gear trucks. Frank shifted in his grip, moving so he could get a leg in between Gerard’s thighs and rub against him, wanting to feel him grow harder in his jeans. 

At that, Gerard tugged on Frank’s hair, pulling his face away and gasping as he tried to take a full breath. “You’re drunk,” he said matter-of-factly, licking at his lips where he could taste beer. 

Frank shrugged. “Just a little.” He pulled him in by his jacket again to kiss him sloppy and open-mouthed. “Not enough that you should feel weird about this, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said between kisses. “I consent. Enthusiastically.” He smirked and his hand snaked down between them until he found his target and cupped the bulge in Gerard’s jeans firmly, making him suck in a sharp breath as his fingers traced the outline of his hardening dick.

This time it was Frank who moaned, dropping his head to Gerard’s shoulder as both hands fumbled at his fly. “Need you, Gee. Fuck I need you,” he said into the denim of Gerard’s jacket. He rolled his hips against Gerard’s leg, seeking friction, and he was just tugging his belt open when he felt fingers encircle his wrists, pulling him away. Frank whined, but Gerard ignored him and pushed him back, making Frank stumble. 

“Not here,” he said. He looked frazzled, lips kiss-swollen and hair in disarray. His belt was half undone and there were faint red marks on his neck from Frank’s lips and teeth. It made Frank want to reach for him again, but he kept his hands to himself and tried to shake the fog from his mind. 

“My place,” he offered, trying to sound more even-keeled than he felt. “Dewees is in San Diego.” He was leaning forward before he realized it, getting into Gerard’s space again and sliding his hands under his jacket to wrap his arms around his waist. “Come home with me.” He tugged and pulled him off the wall, walking backwards with him for a couple steps as if he could drag him all the way back to his apartment like this. 

Gerard put his hands firmly on Frank’s hips and leaned down to catch him in a kiss that stilled him. When he had a bit of alcohol in him, he was even more susceptible to Gerard than usual, the places where their skin touched burning hot enough to consume him. His grip on his waist went slack, and Gerard easily pulled his arms away, turning him as he broke the kiss and led him out of the alley with a hand on the small of his back. “Your place,” he said, “but I’m driving.” Frank was all too eager to give his agreement, sliding his hand into Gerard’s back pocket and kneading his ass as they walked, which caused Gerard to pick up his pace. They passed by some groups of lingering concert-goers, and Gerard tugged Frank’s hood back up over his head from where it had fallen and kept his face angled down at the street as they walked a little too quickly back to his car. 

\---

Frank cursed under his breath as he fumbled with the third and last lock on his apartment door. This was always the one that stuck, but he didn’t want to fix it because he wasn’t about to eliminate one more inconvenience for an intruder. Not in this neighborhood with its broken window buildings and pothole streets and strung out dudes crumpled on street corners. The name of the game was efficiency. He and Dewees both felt pretty confident in their abilities to handle themselves and be imposing when they needed to, so they lived as dirt cheap as they could possibly stand in order to sink the rest of their cash into touring and recording. It wasn’t the neatest solution, but it worked. 

Finally, the lock clicked open and Frank shoved open the door, giving it a little kick for extra leverage on the way in. He realized when he shut the door behind them, doing up all the locks again, that Gerard had only been in this apartment once before when they’d first moved in. Since then it had fallen victim to Frank and Dewees’s chaos: amps and guitars were scattered along one wall of the living room, making the small space even more cramped than it already was. Plastic bins of merch were stacked in the corner, a couple t-shirts pinned to the wall where Frank was trying out new designs. Broken down mic stands and a Casio keyboard on its side were crammed between the bins and a bookcase that held more CDs and DVDs and a variety of cameras than books. Beer bottles lined the windowsill. A bass half taken apart, its wiring exposed, lay across the coffee table next to an ashtray almost overflowing with cigarette butts from Frank’s chain smoking.

Frank felt himself blush. He felt like a hypocrite for all those times on the bus when he’d been the one harping at the others to keep their space clean. He turned and opened his mouth to apologize for the mess, but his words turned into a squeak of surprise when suddenly Gerard was on him, kissing him and sliding his hands up under his hoodie, pushing them back towards the couch. He lifted Frank’s arms up and yanked his hoodie up off over his head, throwing it to the side as Frank fell back onto the couch and Gerard straddled him. “Shit. Gee,” he managed before his mouth was preoccupied again, Gerard’s tongue moving over his. He wasn’t sure what the fucking rush was, but he also wasn’t complaining about it either. Soon his shirt went the way of his hoodie, and Gerard dragged his calloused fingertips over Frank’s ribs and down his stomach, coming to a rest at the “And” on his abdomen.

He leaned forward, pressing their hips together in a way Frank definitely took notice of, and finally pulled away from his mouth, leaning down to lick at his I AM A GRAVEYARD tattoo running across his collarbones. “Sorry,” he said into Frank’s skin. “For being so absent.” One of his hands slid into Frank’s hair, his thumb rubbing at his earlobe in a way the made Frank’s breathing hitch. “And being flaky. And everything. Fuck, I’m sorry for everything, Frank,” he said, palming Frank through his jeans as he kissed at the edge of his chestpiece. 

Frank winced and shifted uncomfortably under Gerard. “No,” he said, pushing him away. Gerard leaned back and came up all doe-eyed, a mixture of lust and concern and, Frank thought, pain. “I don’t want you to kiss me or fuck me or hang out with me just because you feel bad,” he spat. He imagined it in his head: Gerard agreeing, slipping off his lap, heading out the door like he’d never been there.

“Frank, that’s not-”

“I swear to God, Gerard. I swear to God, if this is a pity fuck…” Frank groaned at the thought and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw stars, his heart beginning to beat faster with anxiety.

“Hey,” Gerard said softly. He wrapped his fingers around Frank’s wrists, trying to coax him to drop his hands, but Frank wouldn’t budge. “Hey,” he said again, tugging more firmly, and this time Frank gave in. Gerard looked serious, and maybe a little upset. “I don’t do pity fucks. And Christ, you could never be… that. I love you. And I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He swallowed hard, worrying at his bottom lip the way he did when he was nervous. “I just… I know shit really sucks right now, and I know most of it’s my fault and I just… feel really fuckin’ bad about it. All the time. And I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice weakening. 

Gerard was always sorry. He was in a perpetual state of apology since Frank had met him. Sorry when he was drunk and high, sorry when he was sober, sorry when he locked them all in the studio for ten hours at a time, sorry when he couldn’t get out of bed. But Frank had never asked for those apologies. 

Frank freed one of his wrists from Gerard’s grip to stroke along his forehead with his thumb, smoothing out the creases forming between his brows. “I know you are,” he said gently. He sat up, leaning forward to wrap his arms around Gerard in his lap. “But I don’t need you to be sorry,” he said, pressing his face into his neck. “I just need you to be here.”

Gerard hesitated before hugging Frank back, stroking his hair as he held him and whispering, “Okay.”

Okay. Frank kept his arms tight around Gerard, shutting his eyes and trying to focus on Gerard’s warmth and the reassuring way he held him. _Okay._ When did Frank become so needy? So needy he was literally clinging to someone? He hated himself for needing that, for Gerard’s “okay” to mean so much. He should be better, stronger, braver, more hard-working, more creative, more everything. Why was he such a fucking mess? 

Gerard pressed a kiss to the top of Frank’s head. The hand stroking his hair paused, and Frank could feel Gerard’s breath on his cheek when he asked softly, “You good, Frankie?”

Was he good? No, he definitely wasn’t, but he also wasn’t going to sit around and fucking mope, especially not when he had a still semi-hard Gerard in his lap. So instead, Frank nodded and picked up his head, surging up to meet Gerard’s lips. Gerard faltered for a moment before kissing Frank back, knotting his fingers into Frank’s hair for stability more than anything else because Frank was kissing him hard, almost unbalancing him on his lap. 

Frank’s hands traveled lower, moving underneath Gerard’s shirt and skimming across his bare back. Gerard gasped when Frank bit down roughly on his lip and managed to pull away for a moment. “Frank, we… we don’t have to-” he stammered, but Frank silenced him with another clash of lips and teeth and tongue. They didn’t have to, but he wanted to. Needed to.

He tightened an arm around Gerard and shifted, turning and tilting him back until he was pressed into the couch and Frank was on top of him. Gerard moaned and arched up into Frank when he rolled his hips against his, but Frank was too antsy to keep up with the denim on denim. He travelled down to suck hard at Gerard’s neck, unapologetically forming hickeys on his skin as he worked to undo Gerard’s belt. “Wanna blow you,” he said, biting down as he felt the belt finally give under his fingers. “And then fuck you,” he added, lips at his ear. He smiled at the shudder he could feel run through Gerard’s body. He popped the button on his jeans easily and found Gerard’s mouth again, tasting him greedily as their tongues slid across each other. 

Gerard’s breathing hitched as Frank stuck his hand down his pants, wrapping his fingers around Gerard’s mostly hard cock and stroking him slowly as he pulled away to look Gerard in the eye. He shifted his weight to his elbow to brush the hair out of Gerard’s face. His hazel eyes were glassy but fixed on Frank, mouth open, panting out short little breaths, cheeks pink, hair fanned out around him like a dark halo. With his cheekbones and the contrast of dark hair on fair skin, he looked like a damn painting. “You’re so fucking pretty,” Frank murmured, leaning in to kiss him again, just once, before he moved down Gerard’s body. 

He trailed his fingers down his still clothed chest, and then over his stomach, and when he finally reached his pants, he pushed the hem of his shirt up. Frank placed small butterfly kisses on his belly, his abdomen, the faint V of his hip flexor muscles. “So fucking gorgeous,” he whispered into his skin. He always loved Gerard’s body, even when he didn’t. Which Frank got because God fucking knows there were times when he wanted to tear his own skin off and leave it in a garbage bin somewhere. But fuck, he always thought Gerard looked like a damn angel, all the soft, pale lines of him. 

Frank felt Gerard’s fingertips caressing his jaw, a light touch on his skin as he finally undid his zipper and pulled his pants and underwear down halfway down his thighs, just enough to expose Gerard’s cock. A moan escaped Frank’s lips at the sight, and without giving it a second thought, he dragged his tongue along the underside of his dick, licking him from base to tip and reacquainting himself with the taste. Gerard hissed through his teeth and Frank heard him curse quietly above him as his fingertips tightened against his jaw.

Finally Frank took him in hand again, giving him a few slow strokes, watching with fascination at the way his velvety skin moved over his veins. Even that was enough to get Gerard’s hips rocking into his hand, and Frank smirked. He leaned forward to press a kiss to the head of Gerard’s cock and then pulled back slightly until his bottom lip was barely touching him, his breath fanning out over the tip of him on every exhale. He stilled his hand and looked up at Gerard. A jolt of electricity ran down his spine when he found Gerard was looking straight at him, laser-focused with an intense gaze that made Frank consider never leaving this position for as long as he lived. 

Gerard’s hips stuttered and he let out a choked, broken, “Frank.” 

Frank smirked, running his fingertips across Gerard’s balls almost absentmindedly. Gerard moaned and his eyelids fluttered for a moment, but he kept his gaze on Frank. Sometimes Gerard was too nice, too polite, too afraid of pressuring Frank to tell him what he wanted. Those were the times when he was the most down on himself, when it wasn’t too much of a stretch to expect Frank, or really anyone, to leave him at any time if he said the wrong thing. 

Frank wasn’t about that. He liked to make him ask. Liked to make him say it. “What?” he said. He dragged his lips down Gerard’s shaft, mouth resting at the base of him as he leaned his head against Gerard’s thigh, relishing how warm it was against his cheek. 

Gerard groaned in frustration. His fingers tangled into Frank’s hair as he tugged him forward insistently. “Frank, please,” he begged, voice strained. That one went straight to Frank’s dick, and he reached down to press his palm against it, trying to find some small relief. 

Frank kissed along Gerard’s shaft. He didn’t have much of a choice with Gerard’s hold on his hair pulling him closer to his cock, where Frank knew he needed him. But still, he wanted to hear it. “Please what?” he asked innocently, blinking wide, wondering eyes up at Gerard, who looked like he was about to explode out of his skin, eyes squeezed shut tight and every muscle taut and tense as he tugged even harder on Frank’s hair. 

“Please!” he said again, firmer this time. But then he looked at Frank and his expression went from demanding to desperate. “Frankie, please. Just fucking… Fuck, suck me off. Please, I need it. I need your mouth. Just fucking--ah!” Gerard cried out as Frank took him in his mouth, watching him as he sank down onto his shaft. Gerard’s head had fallen back, but Frank could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he gulped and tried to keep his wits about him. It was fun to see him try. It was even more fun to make him fail. 

Gerard’s fingers curled and uncurled in his hair as Frank set a steady pace, rocking back and forth as he brought his lips down to meet his fist on Gerard’s cock over and over again. He found friction against the couch, rolling his hips against it to give the bulge in his pants something while his other hand busied itself with cupping Gerard’s balls. Gerard gasped and moaned above him, his hips twitching minutely, and if Frank’s mouth hadn’t been full, he would have smiled. He hadn’t expected to crack his cool facade so quickly. 

Frank pulled off with an obscene wet sound and let his hand take over as he moved lower to his new target. Frank’s tongue ran over Gerard’s balls with care, tracing the outline of them before he sucked one gently into his mouth. A full body shudder ran through Gerard, his thighs quaking on either side of Frank, and he made a sound Frank wasn’t sure how to describe, something between a sob and a moan and a gasp. Something Frank wanted to hear again. He massaged it with his tongue, applied a small amount of suction that made Gerard’s hips buck, before dropping it and moving to the next one. Another cry from Gerard made it worth it despite the sting of nails digging into his scalp. 

“Frank,” he gasped, and Frank pulled away to look up at his face, but barely got a chance when Gerard was dragging him by the hair back to his cock, putting his mouth right where he wanted it. 

Frank resisted for a moment and smirked up at him. “This?” he asked, flicking his tongue against the head of Gerard’s dick, but the words had barely left his mouth when Gerard was pushing him down, moaning wantonly as Frank enveloped him in his mouth again. His hips were moving, fucking up into Frank’s mouth, and Frank closed his eyes and took it, losing himself in the rhythm of his cock slipping past his lips, the feeling of Gerard’s hand firm on the back of his head, the ache in his tongue and jaw from keeping up suction. There was a kind of zen to this, moving with Gerard, delighting in the heavy, wide stretch of him in his mouth. 

Frank inched Gerard’s pants down more and sank lower, swallowing around him to counter his gag reflex until Gerard’s curls were tickling the tip of his nose. Gerard’s moans pitched higher, hips making small quick thrusts like he was trying to keep still and failing miserably. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered. Frank hummed around him and Gerard whined, arching up into Frank.

He was so hard it hurt, his erection straining against the denim of his jeans, and he knew Gerard wasn’t going to last much longer if he kept going. With effort, he pulled off, sitting back on his knees and gasping as he fought to catch his breath. Gerard didn’t make it easier, sitting up and catching him in his arms, pressing him back against the arm of the couch as his tongue dominated Frank’s mouth. He reached down to palm Frank roughly through his jeans, and Frank scrambled to open his pants, needing to feel something finally that wasn’t fabric. As soon as his zipper was down, Gerard’s hand was on him, squeezing him with a firm grip and making Frank pant desperately against Gerard’s lips. He gripped onto his shoulders when his other arm left his waist, feeling unbalanced, and then almost yelped as his head was yanked back, neck exposed, and Gerard immediately went to sink his teeth into his scorpion tattoo. 

Frank whimpered, rocking into Gerard’s hand mindlessly. “Fucking tease,” Gerard whispered, sucking at his stinging skin where he had bitten down, red with teeth marks. “You know how good you look with a cock in your mouth, Frankie? You were made for it. I could tell from the moment I met you.”

The laugh Frank let out was breathy and punctuated by a whine he couldn’t keep to himself as Gerard’s thumb ran over his head, making him jerk. “Y-you thought about getting blown by some stoner punk with terrible dreads the first time you met me?” he asked with a smirk.

Gerard pulled away from his neck, glancing up to Frank before focusing on his mouth, resting his fingers lightly along Frank’s cheek as he ran his thumb across his lower lip. “Fuck yeah,” he answered, giving Frank’s dick a squeeze for emphasis. For his part, Frank hadn’t considered Gerard much when he met him. He thought he was pretty, sure, that was a given, but it was a passing thought. When they’d first crossed paths at Eyeball, he had no fucking idea who Gerard would become. 

He could never have guessed that they’d be here, half-naked on his shitty couch in his shitty apartment in a shitty state more than a decade later, still reaching out for each other after taking over the world and then leaving it all behind. He’d never even have come close. 

Gerard tugging at his jeans, trying to wrench them down further, brought him back to reality. Frank swatted his hands away, pushing him back and then scrambling to his feet. “Bed,” he said. “Come on.” He held his hand out to Gerard and led him to the bedroom when he took it. They’d barely crossed the threshold when Frank shoved Gerard down onto the bed, yanking his jeans down his legs until they were in a heap on the floor. His patience had run out. “Shirt,” he said, pushing down his own pants hurriedly as Gerard stripped off his shirt. When his own had joined the pile, Frank finally straddled Gerard’s lap, holding himself over him as he dipped his tongue into his mouth. Their cocks slid against each other, bare skin on bare skin now, and Frank almost wanted to cry it felt so nice, so much better than being pressed harshly against fabric. 

Gerard pressed his hips up underneath him, grabbing his ass and pulling Frank towards him so his dick slotted up in the crease between Frank’s hip and thigh. “Oh, fuck, Frankie,” he sighed, tipping his head back as he thrusted against him. He was already leaking, the pre-cum making the slide easy, and Frank had to resist the urge to reciprocate. 

“Wait, wait,” he urged, leaning over Gerard to reach for his nightstand. “Just… just wait.” He frantically searched through the top drawer by touch, the task unsurprisingly a lot more difficult with a sweaty, writhing Gerard underneath him begging for his attention. Finally his fingers closed around a familiar shape, and he settled back onto Gerard, lube in hand. “Just one sec,” he said, kissing him to calm him as he uncapped the lube one handed and squirted it onto his palm, spreading it onto his fingers with his thumb. He was still kissing him when he reached between them, circling Gerard’s entrance with his slick fingers. Gerard butterflied his legs further without Frank even having to ask. 

Gerard’s mouth went still and slack under Frank’s as he slowly pushed a finger into him. Frank kissed him to keep him present, traced his tongue around his lips to catch his attention. “Relax,” he murmured, moving down to press soft kisses to his neck. Gerard was hot and tight, so tight, around his finger. Tight enough that it made Frank nervous about whether or not they could do this. He pumped his finger for a few moments, keeping a steady pace despite the clench of his muscles, before pressing the tip of a second finger to Gerard’s entrance. “Okay?” he asked, pulling away from his neck to look up at him. 

Gerard’s eyes were closed, his brows knitted slightly as if he were concentrating, head tilted back, but he nodded. “S’okay,” he said quietly. Frank moved the hair off of his forehead, brushing it back behind his ears and watching his face as he slowly pushed in the second finger to join the first. Gerard grunted, but his hips rocked up toward Frank, rubbing his cock against his stomach and angling to take more of his fingers. 

“You’re doing so well,” Frank encouraged as he traced gently along the back of his right thigh, dropping little butterfly kisses on his cheeks. Sometimes Gerard was the type to withdraw into himself when he got fucked, and Frank had to go find him again and drag him back to the present. Surprisingly, he didn’t mind this task. Actually, it was one of his favorites, mostly because it was one of the few things he had never failed at.

Frank’s fingers scissored inside of Gerard, and he moaned, arching up and clutching at the sheets. He was breathing hard, letting out small mewling sounds every couple of breaths and shifting on Frank’s fingers, trying to re-angle them. Frank knew what he was looking for. He curled his fingers up towards his belly and pressed them up, and Gerard cried out, thrusting up against his stomach again. It was amazing to watch: his cheeks flushing, chest heaving, the muscles in his arm flexing as he gripped the sheets. Like porn but so, so much better. Frank wanted to see more of it. He kept moving his fingers, keeping the same angle, and was rewarded with more noises from Gerard, moans and cries that increased in pitch and frequency the more he worked. Frank added a third finger and Gerard jerked underneath him, his knuckles turning white. “Shit, fuck, shit, shit, shit,” he said to himself. His hips were moving shamelessly now, fucking himself against Frank’s fingers and rubbing his cock against him. 

His eyes were still squeezed shut, and Frank couldn’t have that. He needed to see them, needed to know that Gerard saw him. “Gee,” he said, pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw. His thrusts slowed and got shallower, making Gerard whine and push further onto Frank’s fingers as he tried to keep chasing his orgasm. “Gee,” he said again, stilling his fingers and pulling them almost all the way out of him. That got his attention. His eyes opened, gradually coming back into focus, finding Frank’s face. He looked dazed. Dazed and lustful and fucking irresistible. Frank leaned in and kissed him, pushing his tongue into his mouth, giving in to an overwhelming urge to taste him. He tasted like cigarettes and that cinnamon gum that Frank usually hated but which seemed delicious on the inside of Gerard’s mouth. 

Part of him thought he would be fine kissing him forever like this, just making out until they got tired or dehydrated. The other part of him was painfully hard and suffering, rubbing against Gerard’s soft skin but not getting the real friction he needed. That part won. Frank pulled back, reaching for the lube again. He slathered it onto himself faster than he ever had before, gently guiding Gerard’s legs to fold back onto himself as he lined up against him. “Ready?” he asked, straining. He could feel Gerard’s heat against his dick already, and it drove him crazy. 

Gerard didn’t answer, instead grabbing Frank’s ass and pulling him towards his hips insistently, which Frank took to mean that yes, he was in fact quite ready. They both moaned as Frank sank into Gerard slowly, and Frank’s eyes were glued to their joining. The sight of Gerard stretching to take him was always mesmerizing, the beginning of the overwhelming sensation of realizing that, fuck, he was _inside_ Gerard who was gorgeous and cripplingly nerdy and amazing and rare and trusted him enough for some fucking reason to do this with him. Fuck.

“Fuck,” he said out loud, and Gerard nodded underneath him, like ‘yes, that is what we are doing’ or ‘yes, that’s what I want you to do,’ and for some reason it made Frank want to giggle, a bubble of hilarity building in his throat. But then Gerard shifted his hips up, taking Frank as deep as he could go, and his mouth opened in an almost perfect O as he groaned and clutched at Frank’s biceps, and suddenly nothing seemed so funny anymore. 

He started slowly, still mildly nervous about how tight Gerard was, but Gerard didn’t seem to share the same concern. He wrapped his legs around Frank’s waist, digging his heels into his hips and forcing him forward until Frank practically fell on top of him, slamming into him hard. Gerard keened, gasping and rolling his hips against Frank. “Fuck me. Fuck me, Frank. Please, just fucking… I need you to…” He trailed off, cutting himself off with his own moans as he rocked against Frank’s dick, but Frank got it. He definitely got it. 

He reached back and grabbed one of Gerard’s thighs, holding it up tightly in his grip as he leaned forward and fucked him like he wanted to, pounding into the tight heat of him until Gerard was moaning and whining on every thrust, his nails digging into Frank’s arm so deeply he wouldn’t be surprised if he was drawing blood. It was all Frank could do to keep his eyes open to watch Gerard’s face as his noises reached a fever pitch, his back arching into an elegant bow. Frank couldn’t help himself. He shifted his weight to wrap a hand around Gerard’s throbbing cock, and as soon as he touched him, it was over. Gerard was crying out his name, clawing at the bedsheets and undulating underneath Frank as he came all over his stomach and chest and Frank’s fist. The sight was unreal: Gerard’s eyes wide and dark and clouded with sex, skin flushed red from his cheeks to his breastbone, dewy with sweat, striped with come. Add to that Gerard’s muscles clenching down hard on Frank, and he was done. The aftershocks of Gerard’s orgasm milked him through his own as he came inside of him, shaking and grabbing onto his thighs for stability as he rode through the white, fire-ice full body intensity of it. 

When it was over, his muscles were too twitchy and spent to hold him up any longer. Frank fell onto Gerard, barely keeping himself from crushing him by catching himself on his elbows. Gerard wrapped his arms around him and held him tight. He was shaking too, small tremors that Frank wished he could soothe as easily as ironing out wrinkles in a shirt. Finally Frank noticed Gerard’s quiet whimpering in his ear and was reminded of how quickly Gerard got oversensitive. Oh. Frank pulled out, a more difficult task than usual with Gerard’s thighs clamped around his hips, and fell to the side, pulling Gerard with him so he landed with his head on Frank’s chest.

They stayed like that for a while as they calmed down, their breathing evening out and hearts returning to a normal pace as Frank ran his fingers through Gerard’s hair, pressing kisses to whatever part of him he could reach. Frank only moved when the come drying on their skin became too much to bear and he padded into the bathroom to find a washcloth. When they were relatively clean and back in t-shirts and boxers--but no pants because fuck pants--they huddled at the top of Frank’s bed together, smoking out of the open window. 

“I’m still so surprised I ran into you,” Gerard said. There was a small smile on his lips as he looked out the window at the city lights. The street below was surprisingly quiet, enough that Frank wondered if he had lost track of time and it was later than he realized. Not that he cared. Frank couldn’t think of a better way to spend his time than being with Gerard, admiring the way he held his cigarette and spoke out of one side of his mouth and how the shadows of Frank’s bedroom made Gerard’s face look softer, warmer. He could do this for hours. 

“Yeah,” he said. “It was lucky.” For all of Hollywood’s appearances, sometimes it did feel like a small town. Everyone had their circles, and this ended up being one of the things Frank hated the most. Even in the punk scene, it was the same shitty people at shows, always friends of some producer, always scornful of East Coast acts, always trying to impress each other with connections and trivial scene knowledge--always getting under Frank’s skin. It wasn’t like this in Jersey, or at least he didn’t think so. Running into Gerard had been a welcome relief. 

Gerard rolled his cigarette between his fingers, considering it thoughtfully. “You should check out the Ratsnake Lounge some time. I’d never been there before, but it was pretty cool. And the manager knows Ray. I mean, I guess Ray knows everyone somehow, but, you know.” He took a drag and blew the smoke out deliberately, pursing his lips so it came out in a neat column. He fixed his gaze on Frank and smiled, a twinkle in his eye. “It screamed ‘Death Spells album release party’ to me,” he said.

Frank winced, jerking away from Gerard and focusing all of his attention on his still burning cigarette. “I-I don’t… Death Spells might not… We don’t have…” Frank sighed and ran a hand through his own hair, squeezing his eyes shut. He couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the words. Couldn’t tell Gerard he was a failure. 

Gerard didn’t need to hear him say it though. Frank felt a soft touch on his cheek and opened his eyes to see Gerard looking at him with concern written plainly on his face. “What happened?”

Frank shrugged defensively, turning away from Gerard’s touch. He had steadfastly avoided doing a post-mortem of the situation, both because he didn’t want to admit that that’s where they were and also because he didn’t want to hold a magnifying glass to his own mistakes. “I don’t know. Shit happens, you know? Not all bands make it. Natural attrition or… or whatever. It’s just… it’s just one of those things.” 

There was a pregnant pause, the air thick with more than just smoke. “I’m sorry,” Gerard murmured. Frank closed his eyes against it. He didn’t want to feel more pitiable than he already was.

They smoked in silence for a few moments, their cigarettes now beginning to burn down dangerously close to their fingers. Suddenly Gerard cut through the quiet, looking at Frank seriously as he asked, “What are you gonna do?” 

Frank snorted. “What am I gonna do about what? There’s nothing to do about Death Spells anymore.”

“No,” Gerard said, shaking his head. “I mean what comes after? No Death Spells, okay, so what do you want to work on next?” 

Frank groaned and flicked his cigarette butt out of the window, flopping back onto the bed and burying his face in the sheets. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said into the fabric. 

The mattress shifted under him as Gerard scooted down beside him. “Why?” 

Frank answered with another groan into the bed. 

“Frank-”

“Because I don’t know, okay?” he said sharply, picking his head up to look at Gerard. “I don’t fucking know what to do. James is doing his own thing now. Everyone is doing their own fucking thing now and I don’t know what to do.” He was trying not to snap at Gerard, but he wasn’t sure he was succeeding. He couldn’t help it. The pain of abandonment cut him deep. It seemed like that was all there was lately. Everyone was leaving Frank behind. Leathermouth found religion, Dewees found a new sound, Gerard found sobriety, and what did Frank find but fuck all? Depression and inadequacy. Cigarettes and half-empty lighters. Calendars with no appointments. An apartment with no visitors. None that he wanted, anyway. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, feeling bad for his tone. His head dropped to the mattress again. It was dark, comforting. 

The bed shifted again, and Frank could feel Gerard laying down beside him, the warmth radiating off of him inches from Frank. It was silent for several minutes, Frank alternately trying to tell himself in his head that everything was okay and then also thinking of all of his latest fuck ups and how they were definitely not okay. He was so wrapped up in it that he jumped a little when he felt Gerard’s finger tracing gently along his arm. 

“Frank,” he said softly, “why aren’t you in New Jersey?” 

“What, you think I should go?” Frank asked, almost laughing. He turned his head to look at Gerard, and his blood went cold at the expression on his face. He was serious again. Serious and concerned and genuine. 

Oh.

“You think I should go…”

Gerard didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His face was enough. Frank felt hot all of the sudden, burning from embarrassment and anger. Who gave this motherfucker the right, when he was the one who suggested he be in California in the first place, when he was the reason Frank didn’t have a band, when he was the one who had just fucked Frank on this bed? He yanked himself away from Gerard, sitting up away from him at the head of the bed. “You don’t even want me in the fucking state anymore?” he said acidly. “Don’t want me in your band, don’t want me in the state, don’t want me in your bed.”

Gerard sat up too, shaking his head. “Frank, you know none of that’s true. Come on.” 

“It was _your_ idea for us to all stay in to California. It was too time consuming going from Jersey to here all the time. It was your fucking idea.” Frank wanted to sound less mad than he did, less emotional, but it wasn’t happening. He spit out the words like they were poison, shame still burning hot under his skin.

“Well, we’re not…” Gerard waved his hand around as if it could find the words for him, dropping it when it couldn’t. “We don’t have to do that anymore, do we?” 

No, they sure fucking didn’t. Frank pulled his knees up to his chest and hung his head in between them, curling his hands into his own hair until he felt pain stinging his scalp. It made him feel better somehow. Calmer. “I fucking hate it here, Gerard,” he said slowly, evenly. “I hate this fucking state. I hate the fucking desert and the fucking idiotic palm trees. Do you know how much water palm trees need? In a state with regular droughts? Fuck. I hate the fucking people. I hate it all.” He picked his head up, rested it on his leg, glanced at Gerard out of the corner of his eye and then decided that was a bad idea because he still looked so fucking concerned. “I stayed out here to try and make something happen after My Chem, fuck, anything. I haven’t not been in a band since I was 11. We were recording and then we fucking weren’t and I…” he trailed off, his words quiet now. 

The mattress moved again, dipped lower next to Frank as Gerard scooted closer. “You can do that there,” he said soothingly. “You know as well as I do that there are great musicians in Jersey.”

Frank shook his head, frowning. “I don’t have the same connections out there like I do here. Not anymore.” The fact that that was the truth felt like a knife in the chest. He was so out of the Jersey scene he thought he might not even recognize it if he went back. 

Gerard let out a laugh. “What, like anyone’s gonna say no to you? Say no to Frank Iero, rhythm guitarist for one of the biggest bands of the fucking century?” He sounded affronted.

“Everyone I play with is out here,” Frank insisted. “Ray, Jarrod, James, Cortez-”

“Bullshit,” Gerard said. “You know people back home. Hambone, your brother-in-law-”

God damn it. Why didn’t he just fucking- “For fuck’s sake, Gee, I stayed out here because of you,” Frank snapped, glaring at him. Why’d he have to make him say it when it was so fucking obvious? Why’d he have to twist the fucking knife?

Gerard looked stunned, like someone had just told him none of the Star Wars films had ever happened and they were all just a figment of his imagination. Including the shitty prequels. “You have… you have Jamia. And the kids,” he choked out. 

Frank sighed and dropped his head into his hands, seeing Jamia’s face behind his eyelids. “Yeah, and what am I gonna do? Go home and tell Jamia I failed?” he said, voice breaking at the mention of his wife. “Have Cherry and Lily and Miles grow up thinking life is all white picket fence suburbia and office jobs? Become a mailman and end up as one of those dads that has a favorite recliner chair and watches football? God, I hate football, Gerard.” He squeezed his eyes shut so hard he saw stars, concentrating on not crying. He wasn’t going to do that today.

Being with Gerard in California was so much easier than the alternative. At least this way he could pretend it was business as usual, pretend he wasn’t having to start all over again from square one, pretend he was still good at the one thing he’d dedicated his life to which was so far-fetched and stupid that almost everyone had told him not to. Everyone except Jamia. He couldn’t go back there as a failure. He refused. Gerard was his safe haven, where none of that mattered. He made him feel better, and was that so fucking wrong? 

Going back to Jersey, leaving this apartment for good, that was admitting that this was all really over. And Frank just wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t. 

“Frank,” Gerard said softly, but Frank didn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to. Gerard’s fingertips landed lightly on his wrist, but still Frank didn’t move. “Jamia would never be disappointed in you. You know that. Neither would your kids. Fuck, you’re their dad. And you don’t have to be a mailman if you don’t want to be.” His fingers moved from his wrist to his hair, carding through it slowly. “You were Frank Iero before My Chemical Romance, and you’re still Frank Iero after. You don’t… you don’t need me for that. You can do whatever you want to do, Frank,” he said. He sounded sincere, like he really believed it.

But he was wrong. Because all Frank wanted to do was to make music in My Chem, and that was no longer an option. Beyond that, he didn’t know what he wanted. Maybe he didn’t want anything at all.

Frank scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up straight again. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. He looked over at Gerard and felt another blisteringly hot bolt of shame run through him. He was so fucking pathetic. “Please, I’ll figure it out. I just need some time. Can’t we…” Frank rubbed at his eyes again, suddenly overcome with a wave of exhaustion. This was all too much. “Can’t we just go to bed?” he asked, his voice cracking again. He felt so small and tender. All he wanted was to cocoon himself under the covers and never have to get out again. 

There was a long pause before Gerard said quietly, “Okay.” And then he was closing the distance between them, tilting Frank’s face towards his as he gently pressed their lips together. “It’ll be okay, Frankie,” he murmured, leaning his forehead against Frank’s and touching another kiss to the side of his mouth. 

“I know,” Frank lied. “I’m just tired.” 

That seemed to be enough for Gerard. They turned off the lights and crawled into bed, Gerard kissing him a few more times in the darkness until their heads and limbs were too heavy with exhaustion to move anymore. Frank octopused his arms and legs around Gerard despite himself, needing to feel like he was hanging onto something, like he wasn’t stranded. But Gerard let him, tracing soothing patterns on the back of Frank’s hand until he fell asleep, and Frank followed not long after. 

\---

Frank couldn’t quite remember his dream when he woke up. Something about a bear. A bear in a white landscape, but not the arctic. Just white. It had blinked at him. 

He rolled onto his side to tell Gerard. He was always good at dream interpretations. Gerard was the one who had discovered that Ray’s recurring nightmare about a catfish slipping out of his hands at the top of the Chicago Sears Tower and splattering onto the pavement below had been about the fact that he was using the wrong picks. Ray had almost kissed him. Frank had narrowly avoided a lethal amount of jealousy.

But Gerard wasn’t there. Frank rolled to his other side, and it was just as empty. “Gee,” he called, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Only silence answered him. He frowned. It didn’t smell like the coffee that was usually brewing if Gerard wasn’t in bed. “Gee,” he said again, louder this time. 

Nothing. 

Frank threw off the blankets, determined to go look for him and trying not to let his mind wander to the worst case scenarios which all involved Gerard in a heap on the floor in different parts of his apartment. But just as he was about to swing his legs out of bed, a small white square caught his eye. He paused, turning to look at it again. It was lying on top of the sheets on Gerard’s side: a scrap of paper torn from the notebook Frank kept on his nightstand in case of any late night bursts of inspiration. 

Frank was shaking as he reached for it, as if he already knew what it would say, and yet it still hit him like a ton of bricks when he unfolded it and read the only three words on the page: 

_Sorry.  
Love,  
Gerard_

Frank’s body reacted before his mind could catch up, his chest constricting so he could barely take in a breath even as he was focused on the fact that it had been ages since he had seen Gerard’s full name written out in his own handwriting instead of his typical “g.” And somehow that made everything so, so much worse.

The paper fell from his fingers, his hands shaking too much to hold it, and pins and needles began to spread through his body, a prelude to pain Frank wasn’t ready for. Tears pricked at his eyes, and Frank hurriedly reached out for the only thing that had a chance of saving him. He could dial Jamia’s number even through his blurred vision, falling forward to the bed and holding onto the sheets for dear life as he clutched the phone to his ear and prayed for the rings to stop. 

_“Hey,”_ she said. 

Frank opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t. His shaky breaths were enough for him to know that he couldn’t speak without sounding like a blubbering mess. He tried to pull himself together, fighting against the roiling, black wave of misery he could feel welling up inside of him. 

_“Frank?”_ she asked. Her voice was concerned now, more urgent. Fuck. 

“J-Jamia,” he croaked. His voice was more hoarse and broken than he had expected. Pathetic. 

He heard a door shut on the other line and then Jamia’s voice, alarmed, _“What happened?”_

Frank meant to respond to her, but all that came out was a choked sob, and then the world was spinning despite his death grip on the mattress and he could taste salt on his lips as the dam finally broke and tears slipped free. Jamia called his name from nearly 3,000 miles away, but it didn’t matter. Frank was lost. 

It was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, this one was a doozy. It hurt to write. I have a few more "extras" in mind, of varying length, and hopefully those will be coming out in due time. I was concerned about keeping them in chronological order, but fuck it. I'm also going to keep them all connected to this fic even though the main fic is finished since they all have to do with the same storyline. Hope you're cool with that. 
> 
> Stay rad, my dudes.


	11. Like Phantoms, Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of it all. The boys are on tour with The Used in the Bullets era and Frank can't get over his crush.
> 
> Liberal and diverse uses of the word "fuck."

Jamia called it when My Chem first walked into the Eyeball offices, which had just become pretty official looking with Alex opting to finally rent out some office space instead of just working out of his basement. Frank was blazed out of his mind as he usually was in those days. Despite the new legit location, he still found a way to commandeer the couch in the lounge most days when he had down time from Pencey, much to the annoyance of Alex and the amusement of Geoff. But Alex liked Jamia, so Frank made it a point to bring her whenever possible to act as a buffer. And also because he loved her, of course. So he was there when the motley crew of My Chem rolled in, a dark haired boy in a hoodie nervously fingering one of Geoff’s business cards. Frank didn’t remember much of Gerard from that encounter, just that he was fair-faced and giggly and that when Frank asked him about what he wanted to do with his band, his eyes grew deeply serious and he spoke with a conviction Frank hadn’t heard from anyone in the scene before.

But Gerard was all Jamia could talk about on the walk back home, so much so that Frank felt the irritation of jealousy pricking at him. “What, you like this guy, Jamia?” he asked, making no effort to disguise the acid in his voice as he kicked a broken piece of concrete from the sidewalk violently down a storm drain. 

She laughed and Frank hunched deeper into his hoodie, trying not expose his bruised pride. “No, Christ. Not like that. I just think you’ll be very good friends. I think he’s gonna be someone you can’t shake.” 

Frank rolled his eyes and looked at her incredulously. “Yeah, and how do you think you know that, Miss Cleo?” he teased.

He skillfully dodged a kick Jamia aimed at his shin. “Don’t equate my deduction skills with that hack!” she said. Frank laughed and she huffed, stopping dead on the sidewalk and forcing Frank to turn to look at her. “I just know,” she said, without the least bit of defensiveness in her voice. “You’re gonna like him.” Frank smiled and reached out to hold her hand, kissing her knuckles. 

“I guess we’ll just have to find out... Miss Cleo.” This time Jamia’s kick landed and Frank let out a dramatic cry of pain, collapsing against a brick wall as if he’d been shot. Jamia had no sympathy for him, walking right on by so he had to jog to catch up to her and hook his arm around her neck. “Oh, come on. I don’t even know if I’ll see that guy again,” he said. Just because Pencey’s on Eyeball too doesn’t mean shit. You know most bands around here have the lifespan of fruit flies.” She just shrugged, and that was that.

That was the night Frank learned never to bet against Jamia’s hunches. Before Frank knew it, Gerard’s band was his favorite band, and then it was his band, and then they were recording, touring, sharing clothes, sleeping on top of each other, drinking, finessing their stage shows from wild thrashing catharsis into something more focused with Gerard taking on a Freddie Mercury-like role with a darker, more sexual edge that Frank was on the receiving end of. And then he and Gerard were winding each other up every night, touching and rubbing and grinding and invading each other’s space whenever possible, riding a dangerous line between performance and foreplay. They laughed it off afterwards, leaning heavily on beer and their bandmates to de-escalate the situation, but it wasn’t long before their on stage antics followed them off stage as well. A lot of heads in laps and cigarette sharing and teasing and hands placed accidentally on thighs, and it started to drive Frank fucking insane.

Frank was a hopeless romantic, but he never fancied himself a cheater until Gerard waltzed into his life and suddenly he was knee deep in one of the biggest crushes he’d ever had while still ostensibly in a relationship with a woman who he had no doubt was the love of his life. She was fucking perfect, and Frank kept imagining what his grandfather would say if he knew Frank was treating her this way, ogling his best friend while sleeping in her bed every night. It came to a head when Frank was drunk and he suddenly found himself on his knees at her feet, confessing all of his sins through full body sobs. There was no one who could make you feel better about being calling an idiot than Jamia, and she flexed that talent that night, holding Frank and telling him he was a moron if he thought she’d keep him from Gerard, the least threatening romantic rival on the planet, because of some arbitrary societal ideal of monogamy. 

And so when Brian Schecter got them on tour with The Used, Frank wasn’t sure whether Jamia’s blessing was a gift or a curse. Without the guilt weighing him down, his crush suddenly grew tenfold, every glance from Gerard setting his heart racing, and now they were committed to living in a small van together for just over two months, and Frank couldn’t see this ending well.

\---

They were somewhere in Arizona and it was just past 2 a.m. when Gerard yanked open the van door, breaking the rare moment of stillness and quiet Frank had found half-dozing on the back seat. The rest of the guys had scattered, chasing booze or girls or a real bed to crash on. Frank had stayed behind. He didn’t mind the van so much. He was small enough that he could stretch all the way out on the backseat, and he was thoroughly uninterested in partying tonight. They’d been on tour with The Used for three weeks and Frank already felt like he was barely clinging to sanity. It was so much bigger and busier than anything he’d ever done before, a crazy whirlwind of driving, loading in, forty-five minutes of wild, sweating, screaming chaos on stage, fans, press, parties, and then piling all five of them into the van to do it all over again in the next city. Frank lived in a perpetual state of feeling like someone was taking an angle grinder to his nerves. 

He figured Gerard felt the same way, and that was the reason he was half-tumbling into the van at such a late hour, barely managing to slide the door closed behind him after three or four unsuccessful attempts. Gerard had always been a drinker, but ever since they’d been on this tour, Frank felt like it had skyrocketed. The dude was sloshed more hours in the day than he was sober, and Frank had suddenly become intimately familiar with the noises Gerard made when he puked. “Gee,” he mumbled, his voice still slow and sleep-worn. He wasn’t sure Gerard had even noticed he was here. At the sound of his voice, Gerard abruptly changed his trajectory from the back cab to Frank, clutching onto the headrests for support. But his feet were heavy and uncoordinated, and he tripped over himself in no time, flailing and thudding face-first onto the seat by Frank’s knees. Frank heard him groan, and then Gerard slowly picked his head up. Frank could see with the faint light filtering in from the streetlamps that Gerard was looking at him with black, glassy, unfocused eyes, and suddenly he felt like he had another stomach ache coming on. 

With a clumsy effort that made Frank cringe, Gerard dragged himself up until his body was pressed along Frank’s side, his head resting on his belly as his arms went around him and clutched him tight. “Frankie,” he slurred into the fabric of Frank’s shirt. “‘M sorry. ‘S late. Me ‘n Bert were out ‘n drank a lot. A lot a lot. Drank a fuckin’ lot.” Gerard groaned again and dug his head further into Frank’s stomach, looking like he was trying to change positions for a moment before he gave up and relaxed again. 

Frank grimaced even as he gently ran his fingers through Gerard’s hair, smoothing it back down into normalcy. Bert was a nice guy and all--Frank liked him--but he and Gerard together were each other’s worst nightmares. They fed off each other’s most destructive tendencies, which at its worst meant going on benders of booze and coke and pills and God knows what else. Alone, Gerard drank. With Bert, Gerard flirted with a somber VH1 _Behind the Music_ special, his portrait rendered in black and white. 

“Thought I’d crash here,” he mumbled. “Din’t know you’d be here. I c’n go. Bert’s bus ‘s a couch. I’ll just..” Gerard fumbled for a moment before managing to push himself up on his elbows, getting ready to leave, but Frank’s hand shot out to grab his arm. 

“No!” he said, panic evident in his voice. He took a breath, trying to calm himself. “I mean, you don’t have to go. You can stay. It’s fine. There’s room, and I don’t mind.” He was gentler this time, hoping to coax Gerard into complying. The idea of Gerard staying with Bert when he was already in this state nearly gave Frank a heart attack. He tugged on Gerard’s arm and was thankful when he gave in, his resolve and body both pliant and rubbery from all the alcohol in his system. He pulled him up so Gerard’s head was on his chest. They were really crammed together on the backseat, Gerard having to keep his arms around Frank just to keep from falling off, a seat belt buckle digging into Frank’s hip. But Frank didn’t mind. They were on top of each other all the time, and honestly, Frank liked it, even in these circumstances. He liked it a lot. Though Frank was a handsy person, he was also the kind of guy who could dish it out but couldn’t take it himself. Most people made his skin crawl when they touched him, but not Gerard. Somehow he always got it right.

“Y’smell nice,” Gerard said, pressing his face further into Frank’s chest. 

Frank snorted and tugged at Gerard’s hair playfully. “I just smell better than you.” Though they both hadn’t showered in three days, Gerard reeked of vodka seeping out of his pores, and that made all the difference. 

“Nuh-uh,” he said, angling up towards Frank until he was nosing at his neck and dramatically taking another whiff of him. “They could bottle this shit up ‘n sell it. Put yer face on it ‘n sell a million cases cuz you’re so pretty.” 

Frank couldn’t help but smile a little. “You’re ridiculous,” he said with a giggle.

Gerard scooted his body up, wrapping an arm around Frank so his fingers rested on one side of his neck while he nuzzled into the other side, evidently deciding that this was was the position he wanted to cuddle in now. “‘N yer still pretty,” he said, his breaths hot against Frank’s skin. 

Frank swallowed, took in a slow, deliberate breath through his nose. Christ, this happened too often: Gerard would get close and Frank’s heart would race, overly focused on the warm points where they touched. And right now it felt like those points were everywhere, like Gerard was all over him--their legs intertwined, his body lying half over Frank’s, his lips resting against his neck, his fucking eyelashes brushing against Frank’s skin every time he blinked. Fuck. Half of him wanted to extricate himself get some air; the other half wanted to clutch Gerard to him so tight he’d never have to let go. He settled for balling his hand into a fist against Gerard’s back and staying dead still, trying to ignore how nice Gerard felt against him. They were friends. Worse than that, they were bandmates. This definitely couldn’t happen, no matter what Jamia said about it. 

Luckily, Gerard seemed to settle into Frank, the alcohol taking over and weighing him down. He went quiet and rested heavier on Frank, his limbs loose, his breathing evening out, and it helped. A slow, sleepy Gerard was a Gerard Frank could handle. 

“‘M sorry ‘m so drunk,” he murmured, his voice soft and just this side of hoarse. “I dunno… I....” He trailed off, but Frank didn’t need to hear the end of it. He gave him a squeeze for a moment before rubbing rhythmically up and down his back in what he hoped was a soothing way. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “It happens.” It was a hard tour, their first significant tour with real clubs and real audiences, not just whoever came to fucking Kyle’s house party that day. Frank couldn’t blame Gerard for drinking when all of their nerves were so shot. But still, even he knew this wasn’t right. There was partying hard, and then there was self-destruction, and Frank was afraid Gerard was slipping too far to the other side. It was almost cliche: the tortured, substance abusing frontman. 

Frank shook his head, trying to push the thought out of his mind. Those stories didn’t end well, historically speaking. Gerard wasn’t like them. He couldn’t be. But if he and Bert kept getting this fucked up… 

Before he knew it, the words were tumbling out of his mouth, “I don’t think you should hang out with Bert, anymore. Not like this. He’s not… good for you.” God, he sounded like his fucking mom. Next he’d be nagging Gerard about cigarettes and asking him to call home more often.

Gerard made a kind of humming noise, and then shifted into a small chuckle. “What is good for me?” he asked. His tone was dark, pessimistic. 

Frank rolled his eyes, annoyance sparking in him. Gerard’s fatalistic tendencies pissed him off. “Fuck you. Vegetables, Grant Morrison comics, Blur. A lot of things, Gerard. But not this, not Bert. I’m serious. You can’t… you can’t keep doing this, man. I’m… I’m fucking scared for you.”

Gerard mumbled something Frank couldn’t make out and shifted in his arms. He propped himself up on an elbow, swaying slightly, so he could look Frank in the face. “Scared? Or jealous?” he said, making an expression that looked like it was supposed to be smirk.

“I’m fucking serious,” he spit out, and then his ears actually processed what Gerard said and he frowned. “Jealous?” Frank snorted and tugged on Gerard’s elbow, pulling him back down preemptively before he had the chance to fall on top of him. “Jealous of what?” he asked as Gerard’s head settled back on his chest. Then it dawned on him what Gerard meant and he felt his stomach turn. “Are you… _Jesus Christ_ , are you fucking Bert?” he asked, a little too loudly. He couldn’t help it. The image of a naked Bert on top of Gerard had just entered his head and he felt like no amount of bleach or booze would ever be able to scrub it away. Bert’s stringy hair, Gerard’s pale skin--Frank felt queasy. 

“No,” Gerard said, hedging. He looked up at Frank and then away. “No. Have-haven’t… I mean we’ve done… bu’ w’haven’t…” His slurring grew worse as he awkwardly flailed his hands in the air, trying to indicate something invisible to Frank but ultimately failing. He floundered for a moment, hands and mouth trying to say something before he picked himself up again on his elbow, hovering over Frank’s face. “Would you be jealous if I was?” He wasn’t smirking anymore. He was looking at Frank with big, sincere eyes which, even when he was drunk, made Frank’s heart throb.

The atmosphere in the van changed, grew heavier, thicker, because Frank knew the answer immediately. Mental images came unbidden of Gerard bent over or bending over someone else, hair in his eyes, his face twisted up the way it sometimes was on stage--times when Frank had to double check to make sure his guitar was hiding his crotch. Imagining that made him feel hot under his skin, made his muscles clench involuntarily. Yes, he was jealous. Completely. “No,” he lied, adding, “You can fuck anyone you want, Gee.”

Gerard shifted, planting a knee in between between Frank’s legs for stability so he could hold himself over him without twisting and lean in even closer, looking at him earnestly. “Y’won’t be mad?” 

Frank felt like someone was sitting on his chest, forcing all the air out of him and pinning him down, and all he could do was stare up at Gerard and his stupid pretty face and his stupid greasy hair smelling like vodka and death in his stupid leather jacket that was more duct tape than leather by now. “No,” he croaked out, suddenly breathless. He cleared his throat and spoke again with only moderate improvement. “I won’t--I won’t be mad.” That was certainly true. Whether or not he was jealous, he certainly had no right to be upset about it. 

Frank wasn’t sure how it happened, because he’d kept his eyes on him the whole time, but suddenly Gerard was really fucking close, their faces only inches away, and Frank became hyper-aware of the fact that practically every part of them was pressed together, from their legs to their chests. Frank felt Gerard’s breath fanning against his face, but he could hardly breathe himself, still frozen in place. “Thought… y’would be,” he whispered. Gerard’s pupils were blown from alcohol and the darkness of the van, but even so, Frank felt the intensity of his gaze laser-focused on him. 

Frank knew what was going to happen before it did, the lightning moment of “oh shit, he’s going to kiss me” coming when Gerard’s eyes flickered momentarily to his lips. And maybe he could’ve stopped it. Maybe he could’ve pushed Gerard away, said no, made the responsible choice, made Ray proud of him for keeping a level head and putting the band first instead of his dick. Maybe he could have done those things if Frank wasn’t Frank and Gerard wasn’t Gerard and if he didn’t want this so fucking bad he thought if he didn’t get it he would just disintegrate into a pile of Frank-dust right here in this goddamn van. 

That was the ideal world, maybe, but it wasn’t reality. Reality was Gerard’s lips on his, soft in a way they’d never been before in their stage or social kisses, hesitant and shy in a way Gerard almost never was. Frank was motionless, still paralyzed by what was happening and maybe a little frightened that he would scare Gerard away if he responded, getting the sense that they were in a delicate place. But then Gerard pulled back slightly, mewled a broken, “Frankie,” against his lips, and Frank couldn’t keep it up any longer. His hands were on both sides of Gerard’s face, pulling him in, holding him there as he kissed him back. 

Gerard sagged until practically his full weight was on Frank, but Frank didn’t mind. He just kept kissing him. Kissing him when Gerard sighed into his mouth, kissing him when he felt a hand slide under his shirt, kissing him when Gerard’s mouth opened against his and their tongues slid together easily, kissing him through the taste of vodka and the smell of an unwashed Gerard. He felt like he was drunk off of it, off of just how fucking good it felt to slot their lips together, like they were always meant to be that way. Finally Frank pulled away, panting for breath. “Gee,” he gasped out, “you…” Gerard let out a heavy breath, and the words died on Frank’s lips as he was hit by the smell of vodka again. Oh, that’s right. Even lying on top of him, Gerard swayed, seemingly unable to keep still, and his eyes moved in and out of focus. “You’re drunk,” Frank sighed, letting his head fall back against the seat. Gerard was drunk. This didn’t mean shit. The somersaults his heart was doing in his chest were for nothing.

He was so fucking stupid.

“No!” Gerard said quickly, and then frowned and shook his head. “Fuck, ‘mean, yes but, I-- Frank I’ve wan’d to fer so long. S’nce I saw you with Pencey ‘n I…” His head dropped to Frank’s chest, his hands fisting in his t-shirt. “Want this. Want you. ‘M sorry.”

Frank closed his eyes, trying to process it all. Gerard wanted him? He’d thought about it since they first met? What the fuck did that mean? Maybe nothing, part of him thought. Maybe it was just the alcohol talking. Maybe Gerard didn’t mean any of it.

Maybe.

“You’re my best friend,” he said hoarsely. Gerard moaned into Frank’s chest like he was in pain, and when he looked back up at his face, Frank was afraid he was going to cry. 

“I know, Frankie. ‘M so sorry. Should-should’ve asked. Won’t… won’t do it again,” he stammered out, but he went quiet when Frank slid his hands up on either side of his face, tracing his cheekbones with his thumbs. 

He knew he should wait until Gerard was sober, when they could talk about this on a level playing field. But fuck, Gerard was never sober. That was like waiting to find a gas station bathroom that didn’t have a suspicious looking needle lying in the corner. Suddenly Frank wished he was a little less sober, wished he could shut his brain off. Because hadn’t Gerard made himself so clear? 

He wanted him.

“No, it’s just… You’re my best friend,” he repeated, one of his hands moving down to trace his finger across Gerard’s lips. Gerard was his best friend, and so they shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t be this close, shouldn’t be breathing so heavily. Things like this supposedly didn’t end well. 

Gerard’s mouth fell open under Frank’s touch, and the sensation of warm humid breath on his skin made Frank’s heart thud harder in his chest. “I know,” he murmured. Even with this fact stated out in the open, neither of them made any move to pull away. Gerard’s gaze was fixed firmly on Frank’s mouth, and then he was close again, close enough that his hair brushed against Frank’s cheek, and he looked up at Frank to ask, “Can-”

But he didn’t get to finish before Frank was tugging him down--no more invitation needed. Frank kissed him like he’d always wanted to, tangling his fingers in his greasy hair and slipping his tongue into his mouth. He felt Gerard sink into him, kissing him with just as much passion, even if his drunkenness made him a bit sloppy. Frank didn’t care. He felt like he was fucking flying. Gerard had one hand on his neck and the other up his shirt, his fingers burning hot trails against Frank’s skin wherever he touched him.

Maybe this wouldn’t last long. Maybe Gerard would take it back, reconsider. Maybe this wasn’t what it felt like, but it would do. If this was all there was, this moment in this van, Frank thought he might be able to manage with just that, right? At least he would feel a little less crazy for wanting it so badly when at least a part of Gerard clearly wanted it, too. 

Frank caught Gerard’s bottom lip between his teeth, making him whine into his mouth, and then a low groan escaped him as he felt his shirt being rucked up higher. The feeling of the fabric of Gerard’s shirt rubbing against his bare skin, the contrast between the warm fingers running over the swallows on his hips and the cool air on his stomach, yeah, that was really fucking doing it for Frank. He tugged at Gerard’s waist, wanting him closer. Gerard obliged, but Frank jumped a little when he suddenly felt a thigh pressed firmly against his crotch and his dick gave an interested twitch. Gerard shifted on top of him--maybe unintentionally, maybe not--and his leg rubbed right against Frank’s cock through his jeans. Something about how unexpected it was, or maybe just the fact that it was Gerard, sent a jolt through Frank’s spine, like someone had given him an adrenaline shot. His breath hitched as he shuddered, his eyes fluttering closed and his head tipping back involuntarily.

Gerard seemed to take it as an invitation, his lips attaching themselves to Frank’s neck and sucking at the sensitive flesh there. “Oh, fuck,” Frank gasped. His back arched automatically and his fingers curled, digging into Gerard’s waist where he held him. Holding on was all he could do as Gerard kissed and nipped at his throat, one of his hands running up Frank’s inner thigh. This was not how Frank had expected this night to go. Not at all. It felt incredible, a wish fulfilled, but it also felt like a lot. Like too much. Gerard was everywhere: his legs, his neck, his stomach. He was warm and needy and heavy, pinning Frank to the seat with his drunk deadweight on top of him, and Frank was starting to feel like there wasn’t room to breathe, to think. And God, he desperately needed some. Just a fucking inch, just enough so he could consider what the fuck they were doing and keep them from getting into something that might bite them in the ass later, because he couldn’t fuck up this band, he just couldn’t, and oh God what if it was already unsalvageable? What if they’d already gone too far? Fuck, Gerard was barely even fucking _lucid_. His breathing grew heavier through arousal and panic as Gerard’s warm palm landed squarely on the bulge in Frank’s jeans. “Gee,” he pleaded roughly. 

_“Well excuse me, I didn’t tell you to drink Phil’s last beer.”_ Gerard and Frank both froze in place at the sound of Mikey’s voice. 

_“I didn’t know it was the last one!”_ Ray, high-pitched like he got when he’d been drinking, both voice and sets of footsteps fast approaching the van. It was like waking up from a dream, everything that had been hazy now set into sharp focus. Gerard’s eyes were wide and suddenly seemed clearer. They stared at each other and Frank felt like he should say something, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it before Gerard was pulling away from him, sliding off his body until he was sitting by Frank’s feet and looking away. 

The chill that ran through Frank was from more than the sudden loss of body heat. 

The sounds of bickering and the jangle of keys, and then Mikey was sliding the door open, catching Gerard easily when he started to tip to the side now that he was leaning on only open air. “Ray got us kicked out,” he grunted, trying to right his brother against the seat.

“Did not!” Ray piped up, fro bouncing briefly into view as he made his way around to the back of the van. 

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. You owe me, motherfucker. I had my eye on Phil’s couch the whole night and now you have robbed me and my ass the pleasure of sleeping on real cushions. Real cushions, Ray,” Mikey said, glowering at him as Ray swung open the back door and started to take his shoes off. 

“Whatever. I’ll think of a way to make it up to your ass later,” he grumbled. And if Frank wasn’t still frozen in place, he usually would’ve made a crack about that.

As it was, Frank felt like he was locked into his position on the backseat by invisible chains, terrified that if he moved Mikey would be able to see everything that had happened on his face, or in the not so subtle bulge in his pants. Luckily, if he saw, he didn’t say anything about it. And besides, he had his hands full with Gerard who seemed to have given up on the concept of supporting his own body weight, preferring instead to let gravity and Mikey handle the situation. Mikey cursed under his breath as he pulled his brother out of the backseat. 

Gerard made unintelligible protesting sounds as Mikey tried to get him to his feet. “Fucking fuck, Gee, help me a little. Jesus, you reek,” he said, straining as he slung one of Gerard’s arms over his shoulders and half-dragged him to the back where he could flop him down on their makeshift bed next to Ray. “I swear to God if you vomit in this van, Gerard, we’re fucking replacing you,” he said with menace as Gerard huffed and sent a weak kick vaguely in Mikey’s direction.

Their set-up was crude: two air mattresses they’d managed to squeeze in between plastic tubs of merch and luggage and whatever piece of gear couldn’t be Tetris-ed into the trailer because there was always something, as a general rule. But it was better than nothing or the ground or the backseat, Frank usually thought, though tonight he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to pry himself away from this spot. Partly because he still had a very obvious erection, but largely because most nights he ended up cuddled up against Gerard, and he wasn’t in any kind of state to handle that right now. 

“You gonna squeeze back here, Frankie?” Mikey asked. He was breathing hard from the effort of moving Gerard and wrestling with him to get his jacket and shoes off. Frank tried not to think about how he’d like to help peel everything else off of him, too.

“N-no,” he said, his voice cracking in a way he hoped wasn’t too conspicuous. He cleared his throat and tried again. “No. I’m… I’m fine here.” 

Mikey started bickering with his brother again, trying to get him to change into a shirt that didn’t stink as badly, and Frank figured he was in the clear. So when Ray’s head popped over the back of the seat, he almost jumped high enough to tumble onto the floor. “Here,” Ray said, dropping a blanket and a pillow with a suspicious looking stain unceremoniously onto Frank’s face. 

Frank grabbed it and snuggled against the pillow gratefully. Ray always took care of him. Took care of everyone, really. “Thanks, mom,” he said affectionately, and Mikey snorted from somewhere in the corner of the van. 

“Our sweet baby,” he mocked in a sing-song voice, and Frank found that he was too tired to even try to find something to throw at him. Touring took a physical toll on all of them, and now that his body finally had an opportunity to rest, it wasn’t letting go. 

The noises of his bandmates in the van slowly settled into heavy breathing and snores, and it felt right. Familiar. If he didn’t think about it, he could almost forget that he’d very nearly fucked Gerard in this selfsame van and potentially ruined their band forever. 

Almost.

His muscles relaxed and his eyelids grew heavier and he hoped he’d find in the morning that maybe it was all just a dream. 

\---

The next couple of weeks were... confusing. 

They were in the last leg of the tour, headed East and edging closer and closer to New Jersey with each passing day. This knowledge brought new energy to most of the group. Otter, Mikey, and Ray were in high spirits, but Gerard was a wild card. One day he'd be hopelessly miserable, holing up in a corner of the van with his headphones on, refusing to talk, barely eating unless Mikey shoved something down his throat. Other days he couldn't shut up, chattering on and on about Henry Rollins’s pivot away from music and how the Silver Surfer's arc is misunderstood and the mating rituals of puffer fish until even Frank was fantasizing about smothering him with a pillow until he was quiet. 

His relationship with Frank was just as unpredictable. They didn’t talk about what happened in the van, of course not, but Frank could feel the shape of it between them whenever they were in each other’s company. Sometimes they’d be on top of each other like always, limbs twisted up as they read comics or Gerard quietly sketching Frank while he practiced on his Les Paul, watching with intense eyes. Other times it was like Frank was a ghost. He wouldn’t talk to him. Wouldn’t laugh at his jokes. Would barely look at him, and when it was unavoidable, it was almost like he was just looking through him. It followed them on stage, too, so that Frank felt like he would get whiplash from trying to keep up with where Gerard stood with him. Here he was sticking his tongue down Frank’s throat, kissing him till it bruised, pulling down his shirt collar, grinding on his hip, and then the next night it was like his side of the stage was infected with fucking plague and Frank was patient zero, Gerard zipping past him in the wings as they stumbled off stage without a word. 

At first Frank was hurt, upset, but as time went on, he just got pissed. And it didn’t help that Gerard was still chummy with Bert and coming back to the van wasted to the point of helplessness more often than not. Frank’s crush be damned, all of them knew that this was getting out of hand. The crease between Ray’s brows grew deeper every day that he had to help peel Gerard off a sidewalk or drag him out of some sketchy basement party, and Mikey was a wreck. Frank knew he was barely sleeping, instead staying up to watch out for his brother. All of it made him so fucking angry that Gerard could be so selfish, taking whatever he wanted from everyone with no obligation to give back. 

It all came to a head at a show in Knoxville of all places. The game clock showed five minutes to stage and Gerard still had yet to be found despite Brian recruiting every tech he could get a hold of into a small army to help look for him. So far, no luck, and Frank was fuming. It was one thing to disappear after a show or during down time, but being AWOL this close to a gig? Frank was going to fucking kill him. 

“Where the FUCK is he?” Frank yelled in frustration as Mikey fielded yet another call from a tech reporting back with nothing. Mikey just shook his head, and the look on his face broke Frank’s heart. He looked so lost and small, and honestly, just fuck Gerard for thinking he had the right to make his brother’s face look like that. Frank wheeled on his feet and punched the dressing room door, pain exploding in his knuckles, just to have the satisfaction of allowing his anger to take physical form. And it felt good. 

“HEY!” Ray shouted. Suddenly his hand was on Frank’s shoulder and he was shoving him back hard enough that he stumbled. “Calm the fuck down. The last thing we need is for you to fuck up your fucking hands, asshole.” Ray looked as murderous as Frank felt, his height and subtly muscled arms suddenly imposing.

Frank sighed like someone had just let all the air out of him. “I’m sorry. I just-”

“I don’t fucking care. Just sit down and shut up,” he snapped. Ray was pushing him down into a rickety metal folding chair next to Otter, who was sitting stoically silent in the corner, before Frank could do anything about it, the force so hard that the chair reared briefly on its back two legs. Frank flushed. He felt like a child who’d just been disciplined for throwing a temper tantrum. But Ray didn’t pay him any mind. He’d returned to frowning and pacing back and forth across the room, weighing their options, glancing at the clock like he hoped it would tell him better news. 

It was Mikey’s worn voice that broke the tense silence. “We have to call it eventually,” he said, staring resolutely at the ground as he cradled his head in his hands. 

Ray stopped in his tracks, looking at the clock, then at Mikey, then back to the clock. “We’re not calling it,” he said evenly. His voice was soft but firm, daring someone to challenge him. “Not early. We’re not calling it until we have to. Not until it hits fucking zero.” 

Mikey sighed and picked his head up to face Ray. He looked anguished, his eyes so pained that all Frank wanted to do was give him a hug even though he knew it wouldn’t help. Frank knew it was killing him not to know where Gerard was, or whether he was even okay. He hadn’t answered any of Mikey’s calls, which was so rare because he’d usually drop anything to take them. “Ray-” 

He was interrupted by the click of the door, and Frank felt his breath catch in his throat as a familiar black-haired figure in a familiar leather jacket appeared hesitantly in the doorway. “S-sorry. Is there time? Am I… am I too late?” he asked breathlessly, cheeks red from running. It was a moment before Frank noticed his hand clutching the doorjamb, the unsteadiness in his legs. Drunk. Again. Frank didn’t know what else he expected, but it didn’t stop him from seeing red. 

They were a _band_. They were in this _together_. He was the fucking _frontman_ and he almost made them cancel their fucking show to do shots at a Tennessee bar.

“You mother _fucker_ ,” Frank said, and he was on his feet and halfway across the room before he knew it, not really having a plan but not really needing one because decking someone in the face wasn’t exactly a complicated task. A pair of arms caught him around the waist and started to pull him back, and he thrashed against their grip. Gerard looked petrified and fucking good, because he should get back as good as he gave. “Get the fuck off me!” Frank yelled, trying to pry the arms away. “Gerard, you fucking asshole I can’t _fucking_ believe you! Fuck, get OFF of me!”

“Frank! Frank, fucking stop!” Ray. Of course.

“No! I’m gonna kill this motherfucker! Showing up three minutes before a show are you fucking kidding me?!” He struggled more but Ray was frighteningly strong and held him firmly in place. Gerard had shrunk against wall, eyes darting to Mikey for help, but Mikey didn’t seem interested in giving any, instead keeping his gaze on the floor. 

“There’s no fucking time to kill him now! Kill him later, we have to get our asses on stage _now_ ,” Ray said through gritted teeth as he held tight to Frank’s waist.

Frank snarled in frustration but stopped squirming against Ray. When his grip relaxed a little, Frank broke away. Gerard’s eyes went wide when Frank took a step toward him, but Frank wasn’t stupid enough to hit him now. Not with so many witnesses around. Instead he turned on his heel and directed his rage at one of the folding chairs, kicking it hard enough to send it flying into the wall with a loud, ringing crash that made Gerard and Ray jump, and he found satisfaction in that. Enough, at least, to tide him over for the moment. He brushed past Gerard without a word, stalking towards stage with anger crackling around him like he was a live wire just waiting to electrocute whoever dared to touch him. 

\---

The show was, predictably, lackluster. Gerard took the stage without his usual energy, clinging to the mic stand for most of the set and even humming his way through some of “This Is the Best Day Ever” when he couldn’t get the words. Otter was more off on the drums than usual, which put everyone on edge and meant Frank and Ray were having to play catch up, looking at each other frantically from across the stage for cues when they found that they’d fallen out of time.

The crowd’s enthusiasm seemed capped at mild headbanging and polite applause between songs, and once, Gerard ventured away from the mic stand to try and salvage it. Frank scowled at him as he sauntered to his side of the stage, taking a step back when he got close and angling away, but that wasn’t hint enough apparently. Gerard grabbed Frank’s hip, pulling him in closer to sing inches away from his face, because a little man to man proximity always seemed to get a rise out of any crowd, but Frank wasn’t into it today. Not a bit. He was stiff as Gerard got in his space, and then during a vocal break he leaned in and licked a wet stripe up the side of Frank’s jaw, and that was it. He yanked away, barely keeping his fingers where they were supposed to be on the fretboard as he glared at Gerard and yelled away from the mic, “I’m not your fucking toy!” Gerard looked wounded, but Frank couldn’t find it in him to give a shit. He reared back and planted a foot against Gerard’s chest, shoving him hard so he stumbled back towards the center of the stage, barely keeping himself from falling over. 

He looked at Frank, shoulders tight, and for a moment Frank wondered if they were going to be that kind of band that gets into fistfights during a show. He was ready for it, upset enough to go through with it if it came to that. But then Gerard turned away, caught onto the next line, and kept going, and the moment passed. Mikey shot him an inscrutable look, some combination of pain, sympathy, and warning. He knew his brother had issues, but Frank also knew that Mikey wouldn’t take him picking a fight with Gerard lying down.

Frank turned away, becoming absorbed in his Les Paul for the rest of the show. He played angry, recklessly angry, catching the skin around the nails on his right hand over and over on the strings until they were oozing blood. He played so unrelentingly hard on the rhythm lines that he forced Otter to keep in time with him instead of the other way around, and when they hit the final note, Frank booked it off the stage before anyone else, handing his guitar to a tech and taking off without a glance behind him. He’d apologize later for not staying to help break down their gear. For now, he had to get the fuck out.

He headed back to the green room, slamming the door behind him and collapsing on the couch in the corner, pulling his knees up to his chest. He could hear Bert’s laugh through the walls from an adjacent room, the sounds of venue staff chatting as they walked down the hall, the deep, far away murmur of the crowd, but even with all of that, this was the closest thing to peace and quiet Frank had had for weeks. He sighed, trying to find comfort in that, in the small cocoon he had made of his own body, but anger still buzzed underneath his skin. More than that really--betrayal. Gerard wasn’t perfect, none of them were, but fuck, leaving them in the lurch like that--leaving _Frank_ in the lurch like that--was so over the line. Even with all of Gerard’s shit he’d put up with recently, the hot and cold attitude, the drinking, the endless partying with Bert, Frank never would have pegged him for pulling something like this. And it hurt.

A knock came at the door, interrupting his thoughts. “Go away,” he called out. Jesus, he couldn’t even get five minutes. 

There was another knock, and then Gerard’s familiar voice, “Frankie?”

“Fuck off, Gerard,” he growled. Maybe he was drunker than Frank thought, because with everything that had happened between them tonight, Gerard trying to talk to him alone seemed to so obviously be a dangerous decision.

But Gerard didn’t listen, because of course he didn’t, and he let himself in, shutting the door behind him and standing awkwardly in the middle of the room with Frank glaring at him. “Are you gonna hit me?” he asked nervously. Frank just rolled his eyes and levered himself off the couch to walk over and grab a water bottle from the open pack on the counter, enjoying how it made Gerard flinch when he passed close to him. “Just, I mean, I’d like to be prepared, you know. If you are…”

Frank barked out a short, humorless laugh as he hopped up to sit on the counter. “Your face is too pretty to mess up, sweetheart,” he said sarcastically, keeping his eyes on Gerard as he took a long pull from the water bottle. 

He fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot and chewing on his lower lip. Frank thought if he was a nicer person, this might be the point where he would reassure Gerard, tell him everything was okay, tell him he wasn’t mad. But he was mad. So mad. And he wanted to see Gerard squirm for as long as possible. 

“I’m sorry,” Gerard said, his voice small. “I got… carried away. I don’t know. I was stupid. And I’ll apologize to the rest of the guys later, too. I never… I know that’s not how this is supposed to go. I almost fucked this all up, and I’m really fuckin’ sorry.” He looked at Frank anxiously, as if hoping to find forgiveness or reassurance in his face, but Frank wasn’t giving him any. Not yet. He just took another sip from his water and waited.

Gerard shuffled forward towards Frank a little, seeming to regret the move as soon as he’d made it but having too much pride to step back. “And... and I’m sorry for… doing that to you on stage. You’re usually… Well, I should’ve known you wouldn’t… want to do that this time. I was just trying to rile up the crowd, you know? I wasn’t trying to piss you off. I’m sorry.” He looked at Frank more hopefully this time, more relieved, his shoulders relaxing, evidently believing all his sins were atoned for. 

Frank didn’t have the same view. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the large mirror behind him. “And?” he said flatly, cocking an eyebrow.

Gerard faltered, his expression slipping into confusion and disappointment. “A-and?” he stammered. He looked at Frank and then anywhere else, down at his shoes, off to the side, twisting his own fingers in his grip. “I don’t… I don’t know what-”

“What about the night in the van, Gerard?” Frank asked, because he never had the temperament to be anything but direct. That’s why he took to punk music so much. Three power chords and a “fuck you” message--simple, to the point. Direct. 

Gerard frowned and scoffed, looking incredulous. His crossed arms mirrored Frank’s. “You want me to apologize for kissing you in the van?”

“No!” he said through his teeth. “I want you to apologize for all the shit you’ve pulled since kissing me in the van. Your fucking shitty attitude that we’ve all had to deal with but me fucking especially. You can't be all over me one night and then ignore me the next day, Gerard. That's not how it fucking works.” Frank was gripping the edges of the counter, leaning forward almost enough to be in danger of tipping.

Gerard’s face was red, teeth biting down so hard on his bottom lip that Frank wondered if he might chew through it. He opened his mouth once, and then shut it, looking down at his shoes again. Finally he managed, “I didn’t mean to. I don’t… know how it’s supposed to work, I guess.”

There was a slap of Frank’s chucks against the tile as he pushed himself off the counter and stepped toward Gerard. “It works by you deciding if you’re in or you’re out,” he said, standing in front of Gerard even though he still wouldn’t look him in the face. “This yo-yo-ing thing is bullshit. You can’t pick me up and put me down whenever it suits you. You make a decision and you stick with it.” 

Gerard looked at him finally, and Frank rolled his shoulders back, chin up. It made him feel braver, less tender, like any answer Gerard gave would be just fine, like one answer in particular wouldn’t bruise him. Gerard’s face was pained, and he shook his head. “I don’t think that’s how it works. Not really. I mean, there’s the band and, fuck, you’ve got Jamia…” he trailed off. 

Jamia. Frank couldn’t help but crack a half-smile at the sound of her name. “If you think Jamia doesn’t know what’s going on here, you’ve seriously underestimated her.” He looked at Gerard thoughtfully for a moment before adding, “Maybe I’ll add that onto your apology list. As for the band, I think we can… compartmentalize. And we don’t have to be… public about it, you know? If the others don’t know, maybe it’ll be easier to keep it all separate.” Frank had all but forgotten about his anger, the rage he’d felt giving way to something warm and more delicate, something that made his chest tingle when he reached out to tuck a lock of hair behind Gerard’s ear. “Besides,” he said, his voice soft, “I don’t think avoiding it has really helped anything lately.” 

And then they were closer, only inches apart, and Frank wasn’t sure which one of them had made that move. Gerard’s hands were hovering around Frank’s waist without touching. “I’m a mess,” he said as Frank moved a hand to cup his jaw. “I’m barely keeping myself together on this fucking tour, Frank. I fuck up all the time. I’m a fucking disaster, you have to know that.” 

Frank’s thumb caught his bottom lip, drawing a ragged breath from Gerard as he leaned in. “It’s okay,” he murmured. Frank looked him in the eye and held his gaze, hoping that he would see the sincerity in him that way. “You’ll get better.” He said it with an easy confidence, as if it were already a fact. And he believed it was, because he believed in Gerard.

The taste of alcohol on Gerard was faint this time, so much different from what it had been like in the van. Instead of being crushed underneath him, now Frank was pulled tight against him and he in turn was pulling just as tight on Gerard, fingers knotted securely in his hair. They were caught in a breathless, needy kiss that ended up with Frank pushing Gerard up against the counter with his hips, sliding his tongue in his mouth and his hands up his shirt until he elicited muffled moans and whimpers from Gerard. The approaching strains of Ray’s voice meant they had to break away, Frank stumbling back to collapse onto the couch before they opened the door. But even with the interruption, Frank couldn’t keep the punch-drunk smile off his face, catching and returning each one of Gerard’s sideways glances as they helped pack up their few remaining things, the first notes of The Used’s opening song booming to life in the background.

“You seem less mad,” Mikey said cautiously as he and Frank packed the comic books and snacks they had brought back into a backpack.

Frank shrugged noncommittally, flashing Mikey a quick, reassuring grin. “We made up,” he said simply, and Mikey’s smile back was genuine, his shoulders visibly relaxing. 

“Good,” he said. “Brian roomed you two together for the hotel night tomorrow and after today I was afraid you might kill each other.” He laughed as he turned and slung the backpack over his shoulder, and Frank just grinned at Gerard over his brother’s shoulder until he’d turned a rather lovely shade of pink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow this took a long fucking time and it could've easily been twice as long. Hope you enjoyed, and I hope I got this timeline mostly correct. I think this may be the end of this series. I'd like to do another piece about Frank and Gerard in Leeds, which would follow this same headcanon, but it's getting a bit crowded in here, don't you think? 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, frenz.


End file.
